1972 Pontiac Trans Am - Rad Ride By Bob

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Bob Bertelsen's '72 Trans Am Might Just Be The Greatest Homebuilt Street Machine Of All Time.
From the December, 2010 issue of Popular Hot Rodding
By Stephen Kim
Photography by Robert McGaffin

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Of the 250-plus area codes in the country, the only ones you're probably familiar with are the three digits designated to your immediate local. There is one universal exception to the rule, however, and it's the 330. That's because the mystical land that the 330 area code encompasses is home to Tallmadge, Ohio-based Summit Racing, the mail-order parts powerhouse that every enthusiast calls at least a half-dozen times a year. Chances are, there's a stack of Summit catalogs sitting behind you on the can as you're reading this very issue of PHR. The fact that the inhabitants of the other 49 states all funnel their hard-earned bucks to Ohio can't be explained as a mere mathematical anomaly. As high-end shops like Ringbrothers and Rad Rides by Troy have proven, the Midwest car scene is giving the West Coast a serious run for its money. Yeah, those two shops aren't actually in Ohio, but the region of the country from which they reign keeps churning out some mighty impressive homebuilt machinery. Stellar mechanical aptitude is what distinguishes Midwestern enthusiasts from the pack, so when we found out that Bob Bertelsen hailed from the 330 area code, we had a hunch that his '72 Trans Am was more the product of resourceful ingenuity than a fat bankroll. That assumption is mostly true, but resourcefulness is just part of the story. Thanks to his incessant quest to become a more proficient fabricator, Bob's Trans Am is quite possibly the finest street machine ever built in a modest two-car garage.

The love of F-bodies runs deep on both sides of the Bertelsen lineage. The first new car Bob's mom ever purchased was a '67 Camaro convertible. She later stepped up to a 350-powered '73 Firebird in which Bob took the test to earn his driver's license. When years of driving on salty Ohio roads did the car in, Bob and his dad fixed the sheetmetal in their garage. "That was my first experience doing paint and bodywork, and from that point on I was hooked on building cars," he says. His mom kept her Camaro for decades, and after Bob built it up he needed a new project to fulfill his need to fabricate. "Three years ago, second-gen Camaros were starting to get really popular, so I didn't want to build the same car as everyone else. I found a nice '72 Trans Am on eBay, and drove up to Pennsylvania to pick it up. The good thing was that the Trans Am was built as a show car in 1984, so it had new GM sheetmetal on it. The bad news was that it still looked straight out of the '80s with a 4x4 stance, side pipes, and a lime green interior."

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To address the anachronistic situation, Bob hired veteran hot rod designer Jason Rushforth to draw up a set of blueprints for his new project car. After a grueling two-year build process, the final result is every bit as nice as prevailing stereotypes might suggest, and Bob's Trans Am is one impressive specimen of homebuilt engineering. It boasts a 575hp LS small-block, variable valve timing, a paddle-shifted 4L80E overdrive, a hydroformed Detroit Speed front subframe assembly, a four-link rear suspension, six-piston Baer clamps, and fat 345/30R19 rear meats. Maxing out the Pro Touring theme is a Vintage Air A/C system, power everything, and a Kenwood stereo with integrated GPS navigation. While that impressive list of hardware would normally be enough to steal the show, in this setting none of it seems to matter. It's all good stuff, but anyone with enough money can emulate a similar caliber of execution, and we've seen it all before. What we haven't seen before is a homemade street machine that could easily get mistaken for something built by one the country's premier big-name shops.

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The 416ci Mast Motorsports L99 is controlled by the company's standalone computer, which retains the factory throttle-by-wire setup. The remote reservoirs for the front DSE shocks are mounted on a custom bracket directly above the upper control arms. Bob likes how they hide the unsightly control arm shims.







Bob spent 3,000 hours crafting the Trans Am to perfection, and it certainly looks the part. That's not including the 400 hours his buddy Willys Smith spent lending a hand with the final assembly. The body features three coats of BASF Viper red, and three coats of clear. The color is a tribute to Bob's late friend, Jim Poma. The gray stripes are paint, not vinyl.
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Just like the big boys, Bob prefers stacking dozens of subtle aesthetic tweaks upon each other that cumulatively yield a dramatic visual kick rather than opting for a couple of flamboyant changes that net an incredibly amateur end product. From afar, it looks like nothing more than a stock Trans Am with a hot stance and big wheels. Up close, however, the subtle design elements flow like hookup lines in an eHarmony.com chat room. Virtually every body part has been modified in some way or form. Out back, Bob shortened the rear bumper 4 inches and recessed it into the quarter-panel. He then built a custom taillight panel from 3/16-inch steel to streamline the light lenses. Beneath the bumper, the quarter-panels have been extended into a handbuilt roll pan that sits closer to the ground than the stock piece, and also houses the exhaust tips. Likewise, the rocker panels have been rolled to cover up the factory pinch welds. In an effort to replace the factory rear spoiler with something less gaudy, Bob fabbed a one-off piece from 18-gauge steel. "I pictured what a Firebird would look like if GM were to build one today, and tried to create it out of sheetmetal," he says. "My goal was to make the Trans Am look sleeker and more modern by smoothing out the car's lines, but I also wanted the aesthetic changes to be completely functional. I tried to make the body panels look more streamlined and elegant with changes that were both subtle yet noticeable."

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Bob's ability to shape custom sheetmetal is just one of his myriad skills, and he's learned a thing or two about fiberglass fabrication over the years as well. To give his bird a custom beak, Bob started out with an aftermarket fiberglass front nose and filled in the vent openings. The bottom of the nose then got hacked off and reshaped with a custom fiberglass spoiler, foglight openings, and brake ducts. The one-off hood met a similar fate. It started out as a fiberglass aftermarket unit, which Bob immediately cut a pair of vents into. By positioning them right behind the cooling fans, they help extract heat from the engine compartment. The finished product is a rather complex panel with smoothly flowing contours that looks factory. Bob estimates that he spent 100 hours on the hood alone, but that wasn't the most difficult piece of fiberglass to fabricate. "I noticed that the Ringbrothers and Troy Trepanier were putting bellypans on a lot of their cars, and I really liked the way they covered up the gas tank and made the bottom of the car look so clean. I wanted to put one on my Trans Am, but I had no idea how to make it," he says. "I first made a mold of the bellypan out of wood, then I took it to a local guy who makes fiberglass animals for miniature golf courses. He said he was way too busy to take on a project like mine, but he agreed to let me use his equipment for $50. I learned a ton from hanging around his shop, and that gave me the experience I needed to fabricate the nose and hood of my Tran Am out of fiberglass as well."

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Even brand loyalists who despise Pontiacs, or all GMs in general, can't help but sit back in awe at the magnitude of fabrication ability exhibited by a guy working out of his two-car garage. So how exactly does the average hot rodder develop the chops necessary to build a car of this caliber? "My dad taught me when I was little that if someone else can build something, that means you can build it too. That's just the prevailing philosophy out here in the Midwest," he says. For a man with such gifted hands, Bob maintains his modesty and is always willing to learn more. "It's not that I'm a better car builder than anyone else, I just have an eye for it and seek out help whenever I can. Some people want to be know-it-alls, but if you're willing to talk to people with an open mind, it's amazing the kind of advice you can pick up. Most of the stuff I've learned is from my friends and guys I talk to at various shows, and even people who build cars that aren't as nice as yours have valuable skills you can learn. Believe it or not, high-end builders are also willing to talk and aren't as hush-hush as you might think. Mike Ring of Ringbrothers has helped me out a ton, and sometimes the most basic tips go a long way. For instance, one time Mike told me that if you use an air gun to cool down your welds, you can move along to your next weld so much more quickly because you don't have to wait for the first weld to cool down. I've had guys at the local body shop give me tips as well, and being stupid enough to jump head first into a project can sometimes pay off. Of course, it never hurts to have very talented friends who are willing to lend a hand."

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Brake ducts integrated into the front spoiler run down the framerails, and supply cool air to the rotors. Bob designed the custom foglight/turn signal housing, and had his pal at Petra Tool & Die machine them out of billet aluminum





Appleman Interiors in Lancaster, Ohio, gets credit for the Trans Am's inner sanctum. The dash, door panels, and center console are all custom. The gauge cluster was inspired by the Nissan 350Z, so Bob designed the cluster for the Livorsi gauges accordingly. The steering wheel is from Lecarra, and the shifter is out of a Cadillac DTS. The Procar seats are covered in two-tone leather. Check out the cupholders in the custom door panels.



Since he felt like aftermarket gas tanks were too expensive, Bob made his own. He built a template, then had a friend weld a custom tank together out of stainless steel for $150. The rearend housing has been powdercoated by Bob's shop, A-Plus Powder Coaters.







The custom taillights were built by Spaghetti Engineering. Bob adapted a gas filler off of a motorcycle to fit on the custom taillight panel. Twisting the centersection 1/4-turn pops the cap open.











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BY THE NUMBERS

'72 Pontiac Trans Am
Bob Bertelsen, 49
Columbiana, OH

ENGINE
Type:   GM L99 small-block
Block:   factory block bored to 4.070 inches
Oiling:   Melling oil pump, factory GM pan
Rotating assembly:   Callies 4.000-inch forged
crank and 6.125-inch steel rods;
Mahle 11.2:1 pistons
Cylinder heads:    factory L99/LS3 aluminum
castings with Mast 1.290-inch
beehive valvesprings
Camshaft:   Mast 230/237-at-.050
hydraulic roller, .588/.607-inch lift,
111-degree LSA
Valvetrain:   Mast cam phaser restrictors;
stock lifters and rockers
Induction:   GM L99/LS3 intake manifold
and throttle body
Ignition:   stock coils, MSD spark plug wires
Fuel system:   custom tank,
Aeromotive pump and regulator
Exhaust:   Sanderson 1.75-inch headers,
custom 2.5-inch H-pipe, dual Flowmaster mufflers
Cooling:   stock water pump, custom shroud;
Flex-A-Lite radiator and dual electric fans
Output:   575 hp at 6,300 rpm
and 540 lb-ft at 4,600 rpm
Built by:   Mast Motorsports

DRIVETRAIN
Transmission:   Bowler 4L80E trans and
2,200-stall converter;
Cadillac DTS shifter
Rear axle:   Chassisworks 9-inch rearend
with Moser 31-spline axles
and 3.25:1 gears

CHASSIS
Front suspension:   DSE front
subframe assembly, control arms,
coilovers, and sway bar
Rear suspension:   DSE four-link
and coilovers
Brakes:   Baer 14-inch discs with
six-piston calipers, front;
Baer 13-inch discs with
six-piston calipers, rear

WHEELS & TIRES
Wheels:   Rushforth Night Train
19x10, front; 19x12, rear
Tires:   Nitto Invo
275/30R19, front; 345/30R19, rear