Ken Block's mechanic has the world's only AWD GT-R LS Pontiac Trans-Am hybird

Iain Kelly
Contributing Journalist
5 Jul 2019
2 min read

The battle between late-model Japanese tuner cars and traditional muscle cars never dies down, so what happens when you want to bridge the gap by building an early '70s Pontiac Trans-Am with all the grip of an early ‘90s GT-R Skyline, but all the traditional muscle car attitude?

Well, judging by the car Gregg Hamilton has built over the last two years, only good things can happen.

Of course, a huge amount of fabrication was required to take a Trans-Am that was abandoned in the western USA desert, and then add late-model C7 Corvette cradles and a mix of R32 and R33 Skyline GT-R all-wheel-drive underpinnings, along with a supercharged 5.3-litre LS V8, custom in-board bell crank suspension and huge Corvette brakes. Gregg has the skills to build this car in two short years as he is Ken Block’s head mechanic and has 30 years’ experience working on top-line rally cars, including at Toyota Team Europe and Prodrive!

This Pontiac hosts almost never-ending and thoroughly epic engineering so it is worth setting aside 25 minutes to watch the full build video and drink in all the insane details.

Is this the coolest Trans-Am ever? Let us know in the comments below.

Iain Kelly
Contributing Journalist
A love of classic American and European cars drove Iain Kelly to motoring journalism straight out of high school, via the ownership of a tired 1975 HJ Holden Monaro.  For nearly 20 years he has worked on magazines and websites catering to modified late model high-performance Japanese and European tuner cars, as well as traditional hot rods, muscle cars and street machines. Some of these titles include Auto Salon, LSX Tuner, MOTOR, Forged, Freestyle Rides, Roadkill, SPEED, and Street Machine. He counts his trip to the USA to help build Mighty Car Mods’ “Subarute” along with co-authoring their recent book, The Cars of Mighty Car Mods, among his career highlights.  Iain lends his expertise to CarsGuide for a variety of advice projects, along with legitimising his automotive obsession with regular OverSteer contributions. Although his practical skills working on cars is nearly all self-taught, he still loves nothing more than spending quality time in the shed working on his project car, a 1964 Pontiac. He also admits to also having an addiction to E30 BMWs and Subaru Liberty RS Turbos, both of which he has had multiple examples of. With car choices like that, at least his mum thinks he is cool.
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