[thefirebirdm@n]

So there are a couple of different accounts on how the hood bird came about. Michael Lamm tells one version of the story in his book, "The Fabulous Firebird". Jeff Denison wrote an article for NFTAC and told a slightly different story.

Some version of the bird graphics was presented by the design team in 1970 but Bill Porter hated it and rejected it. He was replaced by John Schinella in 1971. I've never seen anything documented about the design team continuing with the bird concept until 1973 but I doubt they waited that long. I wonder if, after John came in, they continued with the concept to, as someone else mentioned here gauge the public's reaction. The hood bird on this car is much smaller and that may have been on purpose to not overwhelm anyone with a larger graphic or maybe at the time in 71 that was the size they were considering.

I heard John talked about the bird evolution at a POCI event a few years back. Anyone attend that?