A rebel's guide to CHASSIS ENGINEERING

Before the advent of FEA, engineers used their hands to study chassis strength and stiffness. The approach still offers benefits today, notes the man who wrote chassis engineering's “bible.”

Herb Adams didn't invent modern American car handling, though he was present at the creation. Back in the muscle car's glory days in the mid-1960s to early '70s, Adams enjoyed several enviable engineering assignments at General Motors. One was assuring that Pontiac's Firebird Trans Am was a markedly better performer than its platform mate, the Chevrolet Camaro Z/28. After that mission was accomplished for the 1969 model year, Adams applied lessons learned from a Trans Am road racing program to Pontiac's Super Duty 455 production V8.

The result was one of the last and arguably the best-ever pony cars, the Firebird Trans Am SD-455, whose speed, power, and handling eclipsed anything offered by Porsche, Corvette and Jaguar during that period.