Rare muscle car 'erupts' in flames at Oxfordshire petrol station

An onlooker has described the moment a vintage American muscle car "erupted" into flames at a petrol station. Alan Mutton, from Kennington in Oxfordshire, said he had been admiring the 1979 Pontiac Firebird at Tesco petrol station in Abingdon on Saturday. Having headed back to his own vehicle to fill it up, Mutton said he saw "flames erupt from underneath" the vintage vehicle. Mutton, alongside the vehicle's owner and fellow onlookers, tackled the blaze, extinguishing it before crews from Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue arrived. "As I was filling up my car, this chap arrives in this big American heavy Trans Am, so we got out, had a look at it and took some photographs," Mutton explained. "It's not something you see often and it was obviously this guy's pride and joy, so he was pleased to show us." Pontiac began making the Firebird in the mid-1960s and it achieved global fame in the 1970s when Burt Reynolds drove a black and gold one in the hit film Smokey and the Bandit. The cars were never officially sold in the UK market - those seen on British roads are mostly rare private imports. Mutton said he and the 1979 Firebird's owner had finished filling up when "I looked across and the fla