CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 1969 PONTIAC FIREBIRD

By Angelo Van Bogart

OUT OF THE BOTTLE

‘I Dream of Jeannie’ Barris custom appears again

A period shot of the 1969 Pontiac Firebird 400 used in the TV show “I Dream of Jeannie” after
George Barris modified the car for its return appearance in the final season of 1970.

Few vintage cars have rubbed tires with as many Hollywood hot shots and hobby heroes early in life as the 1969 Pontiac Firebird 400 convertible co-owned by Chad Brousseau of Salem, Iowa, and Curtis Judd of Brandon, Fla. Like most hulks of iron in that small fraternity, the partners’ Firebird was thought to have fallen into history like the TV show in which it was featured.

“Everybody has heard of the Munster Mobile cars and the MonkeeMobile, and this car is one of those that just faded away,” Brousseau said. “A lot of people never even heard of it.”

Of the unknown number of Firebird 400 convertibles built for the 1969 model year, just one was used as Major Roger Healey’s ride in the 1960s TV show “I Dream of Jeannie.” Major Healey was played by Bill Daily, who co-starred on the program about an astronaut (Larry Hagman as Major Nelson) who secretly found a genie (Barbara Eden) and kept her bottled up in his home. Besides its spacey plot, the show was known by gearheads for the cool Ponchos zipping into the screen, all subtly and intentionally placed by Pontiac.

“Major Nelson drove a lot of GTOs, but by 1969, he went to a Bonneville convertible, but Major Healey was driving this Firebird,” Brousseau said.

Brousseau’s Firebird joined the NBC cast in early 1969 through Jim Wangers, the legendary ad man and marketing genius behind performance at General Motors, especially while with Pontiac in the 1960s. Wangers then helped put the Firebird 400 into the hands of George Barris, the King of Kustomizers before it finally went into the personal garages of two different Hollywood types.

“It’s basically only ever had two owners,” said Brousseau. Those owners weren’t registered until after the Firebird was done making its small-screen appearances at the end of “I Dream of Jeannie,” which ran from 1965 to 1970.

“[Major Healey] drove it around as the ‘orange car’ for numerous episodes,” Brousseau said. “Then Pontiac actually commissioned George Barris to do a one-off on this car, so you would think it looks like a ’69 Trans Am convertible — it has side scoops on the quarters, it has the three-piece spoiler on the back — but Barris painted it and it went from the original [Carousel Red] to a color close to Chevy Rally Green, a really deep metallic green color, with white stripes. Then it went back on the show for a couple little brief spots as the ‘green car.’”

“Major Nelson drove a lot of GTOs, but by 1969,
he went to a Bonneville convertible, but Major
Healey was driving this Firebird.”

Through this conversion, and even earlier, Wangers worked behind the scenes to prepare the Firebird 400 for the small screen.

“In those days, the cars turned over to the shows came out of the advertising and sales promotion budgets,” Wangers said. “And so that would be a decision that would be approved by the ad manager, and in this case, the general manager, John Delorean.”

Since Wangers worked closely with Delorean on marketing matters with Pontiac, he also remembers placing Pontiacs on the ’60s TV shows “My Three Sons” and “Surfside 6.” Of all those Pontiacs, the “I Dream of Jeannie” Firebird 400 stands apart because of its flashy Carousel Red color.

“I am responsible for getting [the ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ car] Carousel Red,” Wangers said. “We were building that Carousel Red color from the start of production in 1969, because that was the Chevrolet color Hugger Orange. We were building all the Firebirds and Camaros out of the Norwood plant near Cincinnati. Because they were on the same production line, for a very minimal cost, we could build a car using a Chevrolet color.”

As Wangers explained it, anyone could order a Carousel Red Firebird or Firebird 400, but few people did. As a result, the “I Dream of Jeannie” Firebird 400 convertible was somewhat unique.

“It was as clear as the nose on your face on the order form, except nobody read them; the salesman didn’t even read them,” Wangers said. “We did a hell of a lot to help [the color] when we put the car on that show. We were very proud, because there weren’t many Firebirds around in that color.”

The use of Carousel Red on the “I Dream of Jeannie” Firebird did a small but notable part to preview a special Pontiac GTO that would be released in April 1969 bearing “The Judge” name. The Judge would be heavily promoted in Carousel Red, but offered in any color Pontiac offered. In anticipation of the upcoming “The Judge” edition of the 1969 GTO, Wangers said the use of Carousel Red on Firebirds was suspended in early 1969 so the color would be exclusive in the Pontiac line to The Judge.

“As a factory, we did not want to put a Trans Am on ‘Jeannie,’ because we had that Carousel Red Firebird there and that was helping us with promoting The Judge, which was so identified with that Carousel Red.”

Keeping Major Healey behind the wheel of a new Firebird became complicated in late 1969. As Wangers tells it, the delays in getting the 1970 Camaros and Firebirds were partially responsible for having the “I Dream of Jeannie” 1969 Firebird 400 freshened for the 1970 show season.

The interior and drive train of the Pontiac were left stock, including the 330-hp, 400-cid V-8.

“We turned it over to George Barris, who had been knocking on our door to do business with us,” Wangers said. “We actually ‘stole’ the car at the request of the production company. When the car got turned over to Barris, he started to customize it.”

Carousel Red was no longer offered on The Judge in 1970, so changing the color no longer affected Pontiac’s promotional efforts. That allowed Barris to borrow styling features from the 1969 Pontiac Trans Am, a car Pontiac chose not to feature earlier on the TV show.

“[Barris] did a nice little deviation on the stripes off a ’69 Trans Am and then that car got involved in quite a few configurations, but I was no longer involved,” Wangers said.

Not all of Barris’ inspiration for the modifications undertaken on the “I Dream of Jeannie” Firebird 400 date to the 1969 Trans Am. As Wangers also recalls, a few of the car’s features date to 1968, when Barris built a run of special Firebirds for another TV program.

“There was a TV show done in ’68 (‘Sounds of ’68’) and they did a Superteen Firebird giveaway and [Barris] built three Superteen Firebirds for it with a similar kind of hood and a similar spoiler, but a more radical front end [than the ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ Firebird].”

Compared to the Superteen 1968 Firebird 400s built by Barris, the “I Dream of Jeannie” 1969 Firebird 400 is closer to stock, lacking the electronics in the backseat of the Superteen cars, which featured a typewriter, television set and tape deck. Brousseau finds the lack of such components in the “I Dream of Jeannie” car as a plus.

“The nice thing about this car is the interior is left stock and [its modifications are limited to] the outside body mods,” Brousseau said. According to one source, Brousseau said the relatively minor modifications performed by Barris on the “I Dream of Jeannie” car totaled $130,000, a hefty sum for the time and enough to buy a fleet of more than 25 similarly equipped Firebird 400 convertibles.

At the conclusion of Barris’ work and then the show, Brousseau learned the mildly customized Firebird 400 was bought by the show’s art director for his daughter at a loss to Pontiac.

“She drove it for a while, and I guess they lived in an area of Beverly Hills,” Brousseau said. From there, it caught the eye of the son of movie producer Mace Neufeld, associated with such films as “Clear and Present Danger” and “The Omen.”

“[Neufeld’s] son had known the car and had ridden by the house it was stored in on his bicycle, and he stopped in and asked them about the car, and he got his dad to buy it in 1977,” Brousseau said. “It was his car in high school and college.”

Any Pontiac Firebird 400 convertible makes an enviable ride on campus, especially a car with touches by a famous customizer. But by 1986, the shine had worn off the four-wheeled former TV star. At that time, Neufeld’s son, now a respected Hollywood type in his own right, bottled up his special Firebird 400 convertible wherever he could find storage. In 2009, he placed the car for sale on an Internet site.

Brousseau and his partner spotted the car for sale, but there were no photographs with the ad. Like many of the Pontiac fans eyeing the car, Brousseau and his partner speculated on whether the car was authentic. Eventually, the ad disappeared until spring 2011 when it re-appeared, this time with pictures. Within an hour of spotting it, Brousseau and his partner jumped on the car and began the process of authenticating it with Pontiac Historic Services.

“When I sent off for the PHS documentation, I got a phone call the next day,” Brousseau said. “In all my years of sending in PHS VIN numbers, I have never gotten a call from Jim Mattison the next day.”

Brousseau learned the Pontiac is unusual because it has three build sheets: the first shows the car’s assembly date and its long list of options: special-order Carousel Red paint, wood steering wheel with power tilt function, power antenna, power steering, power top, power disc brakes, console, Rally II wheels, remote mirror, power windows, deluxe seat belts, air conditioning, Rally gauges and more. The build sheet showed a total price of $4,877 reflecting nearly $1,800 in options to the Firebird convertible’s $3,083 price.

“The first invoice is dated January 1969, and had it billed to the zone office in Michigan,” Brousseau said. “Then it had a second build sheet directing it to the zone office in Los Angeles, and from there, it went to the production company of ‘I Dream of Jeannie.’

“When the show ended, the third build sheet is actually dated the very end of July of 1970, so like a year and a half after it was produced, it was still owned by Pontiac. The MSO was issued in 1970, and there is a charged loss to this account and the final invoice is a dollar.”

In addition to numerous build sheets, the Firebird 400 has endured additional coats of paint over its body. By Brousseau’s count, it sports three re-paints over its original Carousel Red, starting with Barris’ green-with-white-stripes scheme to the blue-with-white-stripes job for the art director’s daughter to the white-with-blue-stripes scheme for the producer’s son. Amazingly, the Barris additions remain under the paint layers, from the unique non-functional dual-snorkel hood to the quarter-panel scoops to the three-piece rear spoiler. Unfortunately, the Barris paint scheme, which included painting the tail panel white, is buried under the more recent repaints.

The fact that the Firebird spent its life in California certainly helped keep it the solid and intact specimen that it remains, although Brousseau notes it deserves a restoration. When he found it, the car had been stored outdoors after the seller lost storage in his father’s garage and a friend’s building. If Brousseau didn’t already have a 1970 Pontiac GTO Ram Air 455 hardtop under restoration, he would probably keep the unique Firebird for his own collection. But it’s just not in the cards.

“I would love to have it, but a car like that, a one-off car, it needs to be taken to someone and be totally restored into a trailer queen,” Brousseau said. “It’s worth a lot of money, and I would really rather drive my ’70 Impala and hit a water puddle and not have to cringe.”

In the meantime, Brousseau is having fun authenticating the car and piecing together its history.

“It is kind of like a trifecta,” Brousseau said. “It was a special car built by Pontiac, then it was a TV car, then it was a one-off George Barris custom car.”

Rarely does it get better than that.

The raised twin hood scoops were part of the Barris body mod’s.