2002 Pontiac Firehawk - Modify 'Til You Die

The most popular year in SLP's successful 11-year run of Firehawks was 2002. What began in 1992, in the last year of the Third-Gen Firebirds, with only 25 production examples, grew by leaps and bounds into 2002's offering of 1,501 Ram Air-equipped SLP Firehawks. For most people, the SLP factory-sanctioned package offered plenty of horsepower (345 ponies is nothing to sneeze at); it included in its standard fare: Ram Air, a short-throw Hurst shifter, 17x9.5 wheels, throaty musclecar exhaust and the classic Firehawk hood and decals. It was the best Firebird you could buy, and people bought a lot of them, relatively speaking.

Firehawks for 2002 also came with a long list of optional goodies, some performance and some novelty, including an Auburn differential, high-rise IROC-style spoiler, Bilstein shocks with Eibach springs, custom floor mats and Firehawk-only car cover. The vast majority of Firehawk owners keep their special F-birds completely stock. To them, owning a Firehawk is owning a special piece of history.

However, the modify-'til-you-die Generation Y crowd sees things entirely differently. Elie (pronounced "el-lee") Bejjani, of Spring, Texas, is the 21-year-old son of the owner of Toyex Bimmer, an auto dealership in Houston, TX. When Mr. Bejjani took in a one-owner, custom-ordered '02 Firehawk with every available optional feature, Elie tells us it was love at first sight. "It was 100 percent factory original," he says. "This Hawk was a trade-in on my dad's Z06 and I fell in love with it." The '02 Firehawk was based upon a $28,385.15 MSRP Trans Am and then added $8,412 worth of Firehawk options, literally every SLP upgrade that could be ordered, and it tallied up to a retail price of $36,797.15

Before starting modifications, Elie put the bone-stock Firehawk on a chassis dyno. The result was 286 hp at the rear wheels. His dream was to create a highly modified Firehawk that retained its Firebird heritage in body and interior only, and that he could use to race against extremely fast Vipers, Ferraris and light and quick motorcycles like the Suzuki GSXR1300. Elie told HPP, "I purchased the car because of its rarity and its elite stature among F-bodies."

Many independent GM-only specialty shops have based their businesses on the details of taking LS1 Trans Ams and upgrading them to well more than double the factory-advertised horsepower. Horsepower Engineering (HPE) of Houston, Texas, is one of these specialty race shops. HPE is becoming known in the world of LS1 and LS2 fanatics like Smokey Yunick is known in the world of vintage Pontiac racers who wanted to drive as fast as Fireball Roberts at Daytona in 1962.

Elie partnered with HPE to design an engine package especially for street/strip F-bodies. It is called "The Big E," and it is named after Elie himself. He describes it as "a specially designed 408 ci stroker motor," which is built to the specs we detail in this story for his '02 Firehawk. You can order it directly from HPE (www.horsepowerengineering.com). For a short-block, the starting price is $3,999.