Originally Posted by Andre#4

I like that LT camaro. That was a nice pattern they had for the leather seats. I always wondered why any camaros could have beautiful deluxe leather interiors, even if they were RS, or 1LE, or whatever, even as late as 1992. but after 1986, the only firebirds that could have leather or deluxe interiors had to be GTA's.

I have a little bit of a story here, it is at the bottom below the pictures. Basically, I was able to find one of the ragtop tta's. I had to sell internal organs to pay for it. It has 8k miles, and it is in new condition. It has been in one mag and 4 books.









There was mention in the beginning of this thread about this car. It is from california. It was not ordered by a customer though. It was ordered by the dealer, at the request of Pontiac Motor Division. The dealer then advertised it in the paper. Then, the customer came to buy it at 9am the next morning, for $50,000. (this is 1989 dollars here, you could buy a new cadillac or corvette for high 20's in those days) The buyer had to fight with another guy who also wanted it at 9am that same morning. I have proof of everything about this car. 100 seperate pieces of paper. Every paper since before the car was sold to today. The binder is 3" thick. I even have the newspaper with the ad for the car from 1989, with the VIN in the ad. The original owner owned it for 19 years and 8k miles. The second owner had it a year or 2, and then I got it. This was the first of only 2 TTA ragtops built. It was the only one built as a new car. The only one with leather. There is another ragtop tta that was built in 1988 as a t-top car, and converted a year later into a convertible, at the end of the model year. It was originally owned by the PAS firm that was in charge of engineering the tta's. The firm used it as a show car and press car from 1988 to 1989, and when the show duties were over, Jeff Beitzel, who ran PAS, had the car made into a convertible. That car is in atlanta now, in a garage with some other rare tta cars.




Here it is again, in the Standard Catalog of Firebird 1967-2002 by John Gunnel


And here is a copy of an old magazine article from Muscle Car Review. (remember when car mags were black and white?)





My car has an annoying gold pinstripe down low just above the ground effects. I wish it wasn't there, because it makes a shadow where the stuff attaches and makes the gap look bigger than it is. I started to rip it off, but decided I shouldn't make changes to this car. I suppose the dealer thought that this was an improvement. Anyway, this car goes like stink, and is fun to drive because of the sounds it makes from the turbo v6 motor. The sounds are so much louder without a roof, plus, you are able to hear the exhaust coming out the back. With t tops, you can't hear much of that, because these cars have such quiet exhausts. It makes very strange sounds compared to what most of the people here are used to. nothing at all like a v8 motor. Imagine a sound made up of a standard 2.8 liter v6, and jet engine, combined. The jet is louder of course, so the motor sound is quiet, compared. And when the car is shooting forward at such incredible acceleration, the v6 sound doesn't make much sense. It's like, why do I hear a quiet v6? It is behind a huge rush of air, and a jet engine sound, but surely that little v6 can't be making this car go...

It is not fast by todays standards, but in 1989 it was the quickest and fastest american car available at any price. 4.6 sec 0-60, 13.4 sec 1/4 mile, 162-167mph top speed, with no modifications. there was no speed limiter. the top speed was redline limited if I recall. It has been many years since I have gone that fast in one of these, but I seem to recall the needle on the red line. Probably a different rear end ratio, or another gear would have allowed more speed, because it accelerates very fast at high speeds. once 4th gear kicks in at 120mph, it speeds up with very fast acceleration right to the redline. It is not like sitting around in a L98 or LT1 car with your foot on the floor, waiting for the top speed to happen. Those v8's didn't have much acceleration on top speed runs. I remember we used to play with the new camaros in the mid 1990's and we couldn't believe how long it took to get up to 150. I had a GTA then with a 350, and it was the same story. Anyway, we both sold our cars and got tta's because we wanted to beat the mustangs in our area (which all had nitrous or 355 gears or both). We hated those mustangs so much. (as much as I hated them, I get nostalgic when I see one these days...those stupid looking things with 4 lug wheels, drum brakes, pinto engineering, etc etc etc) We didn't know how to soup cars, but I remembered reading about the tta and how fast it was. So I got my buddy to buy one. He was 16, and his dad had just bought him a brand new 1995 Z28 fully loaded green/tan leather and bose cd, etc. (the one we played with). It took some doing to convince his dad that the prudent thing to do was to sell this new car back to the dealer at a huge loss, and buy someone elses 6 year old used american car instead. Anyway, I went along to test the tta out for him, because he didn't know anything about cars. Luckily, we found a fast one. Not all tta's are fast, and I wouldn't have known that then. Some of them don't run right because of people messing with them who don't know what they are doing. Or from neglect. Anyway once I drove that fast tta for the first time, I realized I couldn't live with my 350 gta anymore, and I got a tta for myself within a week. before the year was out, 3 people in our school had turbo ta's. And it was a tiny school. We were young and dumb. I had a GTO, which we called a goat. So, we called the GTA a gate. Then the tta came and it was a tate. How stupid and silly were we then? Well, we had lots of time on our hands to do and say silly things. This was before we had vices and jobs to occupy our time.

Of course I missed my gta terribly, because it was bright red. It looked like a ferrari compared to the white car. Well enough stories of my childhood. Lots of water went under the bridge. 15 years went by, Then I found the ragtop.