Remembering the Mecham Pontiac Macho T/A


I try not to rely too much on my memory, which grows more treacherous every year, but I remember the Macho T/A from Mecham Pontiac in Glendale, Arizona. It's was a Trans Am, and more.

I'm not much into muscle cars, but the Trans Am went beyond just having a lot of horsepower. In the 1970s it was popularized by Bert Reynolds in "Smokey and the Bandit" and it just kinda represented everything about having a free spirit, and lots of horsepower to go with it. It was based on a Pontiac Firebird, but no one ever called them that, a Trans Am was a Trans Am. And they were ridiculously powerful, and flashy cars. And to take it a level higher, there was a local Phoenix area upgraded version which was called the Macho T/A. Even then I thought that the term "macho" was over the top, but it was really supposed to be, and it was.

Machos T/As in 1978 at Mecham Pontiac, Glendale, Arizona

I moved to California in 1982, and didn't return to Phoenix until 1989. Every once in a while in Los Angeles I'd see a Macho T/A, which you could recognize by the MP on the back, which stood for Mecham Pontiac, and of course the graphics on the side. I liked living in California just fine, but seeing the Macho T/As always made me a little homesick for Phoenix.

1979 article about the Macho T/A.

When I got back to Phoenix, and settled in, in the '90s, no one that I talked to had any idea of what I was talking about. Mecham had become a name that people knew as a Governor, who made a real mess of things. You can Google about that if you want to, it really doesn't interest me all that much. The Pontiac dealership, and the Macho T/A, had faded away, so I learned not to talk about it, or people would launch into a political rant, which just gives me a headache.

I like cars. I like looking at cars, and I like talking about cars. If you remember the Macho T/As I'll be happy to listen to you. If you start talking about politics, my eyes will glaze over and I'll probably just watch the cars going by, looking for a Macho T/A.

1979 Macho T/A, Mecham Pontiac, Glendale, Arizona.

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Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 20, 2020 at 3:17 PM

    I have 1979 lot#42 would like to see pics of the list price and specs thanks

    ReplyDelete

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