I first started watching as an elementary schooler. I loved the chase scenes and my mom and dad watched it too. He was also a "cool guy" to me as a kid. He seemed like a real guy because he didn't always come out a winner, but he was a real "man's man", someone a man would like to hang out with. In syndication, some of the chase scenes are cut short!!! BS!!!!

I also own the series on DVD. It's really excellent. Reading about the series is very interesting; how James Garner preferred doing as many of his stunts as possible and suffered a lot of injuries. His limp from Korean War, often seen in show and how he would sometimes have to make a comment about it because it was obvious. I remember the one to "Rocky", his father; "I fell off my skateboard". One of the producers commented in an article once that James always wanted to do his own driving but of course they didn't want to chance his being injured. The producer then commented "then we realized he was better than any of the stunt drivers" LOL.

I use to notice as a little kid the early Firebird had the single round headlights and the "400" emblem. Then they upgraded him to the quad headlight and no more 400. He had the Esprit or however you spell it.