Stuart S

Someone else already mentioned it on the Appearance/Detailing board, but wanted to mention it on here because this is where the thread on Scott Moyer's IROC feature was posted...

Glad to see it finally printed; not thrilled with the article; not thrilled how they adjusted the colors and made my front wheel look brown and dirty in the close-up, lol... but it's in there!

LHernandezJr

...

GOATS2QUICK

iTrader: (5)

i read the article last week. good to see that it is a tgo member.

TAdan

Congratulations Stu!

I'll have to pick up a copy.

okfoz

The more recognition we get the better. It is about time, and I think some people and magazines are waking up to this reality. As readership declines, for a myriad of reasons, whether it is increased readership on the internet, or the fact that the old timers that love the old 60's cars are just dieing off, magazines are slowly becoming extinct. They have to pick up new readership. Heck the old time adage of what has worked for the past 50 years is no longer working, so we have to change what we are doing to grow.

83ZZZ28

okfoz... Very well stated.


Rod

83ZZZ28

Stuart S

Thank you!

82tarecaro

iTrader: (4)

Congratulations Stuart! Car looks great!

mars2878

congrats

scottmoyer

I have the new magazine and I haven't had the time to look through it yet. If I did, I would have mentioned the article. Congrats.

Hemmings has an annual rally race that ended in Florida last Sunday (The Great Race). My son and I went to the finish line to watch the cars roll in. Matt Litwin wrote the article on my car and also took the pictures. I looked him up at the show and he said that they will be doing more 80s/90s cars because of the flood of mail they got after my car was published. I reiterated to him that the people that bought a new '69 Camaro are in their mid 60s to mid 70s today. They need to focus on the mid 30's to mid 60s crowd to keep their readership alive. He acknowledged that and argued it with management!

Stuart S

http://www.hemmings.com/mus/stories/..._feature3.html

87 player bird

İ cant seem to read it.

scottmoyer

Unless you have an account at Hemmings, you won't be able to read it. It will be posted here soon.

babyelephant

Congrats, now I look the more forward to receive my copy of the magazine

Stuart S

I've had this car 16 years, today

92GTA

iTrader: (11)

Nice! I've has mine for 14yrs as of a month ago, July 1st 2000 @ ~7PM PST

I wish I'd kept my '82 Firebird I has prior too though.

scottmoyer

I've had mine 14 years as of two months ago.

Stuart, I reached out to Hemmings and requested your article via PDF or web friendly format that we can post. I'll let you know when I get a response. Until then, I formatted the article from their website and only grabbed one picture.

scottmoyer

Gran Turismo Bargainologato - 1987 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am
Is this sub-30,000-mile 1987 Pontiac Trans Am an emerging muscle car contender or a bargain GTA? The answer may surprise you



Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines
August, 2014 - Jeff Koch

When we speak of muscle cars, we speak of them as a collective. Regardless of marque, regardless of specification, muscle cars are their own genre, defined by era and engine size, body dimensions and marketing, performance and peripheries. Within that realm, you've got your LS6s, your Hemis and your big-inch Bosses. These are the rarest of the rare, the generals in the performance wars. The glare of the white-hot spotlight meant that they had to step up to the plate. But you can't discuss the muscle movement without talking about standard-issue models. They were the grunts, the foot soldiers that made a showing on the mean streets of America. These volume sales leaders still had the style and punch to put them above more plebian modes of transportation, and while today these standard-issue machines don't quite get the attention that their higher-profile, higher-end brethren might, they are still treasured, revered, cherished.

Consider the '70 Road Runner we drove recently in these pages; it packed four-barrel 383 power, a bench seat and a column-shifted automatic. We drove it, and it was a beast. Not so powerful that you'd go up in smoke as you mashed the tires, and not a Hemi four-speed that's valued like California real estate, but a worthwhile car that got us more than moving with alacrity. Or think about Sixties Chevelle SSs. They came in 325-, 350- and 375-horse flavors, and while the top models are what widen everyone's eyes, a 325-horse SS is nothing to sneeze at. Alternatively, you could get a plebian 302 in Ford Torino GTs, but plenty came with the 351 Cleveland (it was standard-issue in Mercury's muscle-car volume leader, the Cyclone GT)--an engine that was less than halfway up Ford's food chain, but suitably hairy that Alejandro deTomaso plucked hundreds off the Ford assembly line and installed them in the Panteras his Italian plant was building for Lincoln-Mercury dealers. Was an early GTO a lesser car for having four carburetor throats instead of six? Today, only the most effete snobs will turn their noses up and decry that a car is only a 383, or only a Cleveland, or only a 325-horse SS, or only a four-barrel GTO. There's no only about them. They're damned good cars and the public loved them.

And so we arrive at Stuart's Flame Red Metallic 1987 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. It was Stuart's first car of any sort, ever, and at this writing has been his for nearly half his life. It packs GM's TPI fuel-injected LB9 (not L89, sports fans) engine, 700-R4 automatic with overdrive, highway-friendly 2.73:1 gearing, and though it sports WS6, a limited-slip diff and the optional 16-inch rubber, its original owner did not plump for the optional rear disc brakes.
It is not a high-zoot GTA or a stripped-down Formula; it is not a five-speed gear-slammer or a 225-horse, 350-cube TPI torque-monster. It does not occupy the bucks-up rare-air high ground or the down-and-dirty grass-roots street-level power play. It is not extreme in either direction. It is simply a very nice car that offered very good performance for its day. It's the 383 Road Runner, the 351 Cleveland-powered Torino GT, the 325-horse Chevelle SS of its era.

But unlike those examples, and beyond the inevitable pockets of enthusiasm that greet virtually any car ever built (this one included), the third-generation Trans Am gets precious little respect from the car collector world at large. Take a look at those average values (see sidebar): We're a long way from cash-in-the-401K numbers here.

The question is, why? More than a quarter-century on, we're right in the sweet spot of generational nostalgia; an awful lot of people born in the '70s (and a few in the '80s) will look at this car, feel their hearts melt and start looking for that box of mix tapes shoved in a closet somewhere. Yet, interest in third-gen F-bodies hasn't taken off the way you'd think it should for a vintage performance car.

Let us set aside the perpetual grumblings of the "real" Pontiac community; "real" (note quotes) Pontiacs having engines engineered and built by Pontiac Motor Division, a status that ended in the summer of 1981. According to the keepers of this flame, any Pontiac packing a Chevy mill under its hood cannot possibly be a proper Pontiac product. Also, let's ignore the whole baby-boomer-overwhelming-market-forces argument for a second. We have another theory.
The muscle car era effectively drew to a close in the early '70s (save largely for--yeah, you guessed it--the Trans Am). Could it be that, in part, many of yesterday's cars are held in such high esteem because nothing better came along for years after the fact? The quad-ruple whammy of insurance regulations, big bumpers, emissions controls and the oil spigots in the Middle East turning off threw Detroit into chaos. What little power could be had was expensive to both buy and maintain. Power was dialed back and weight spiraled up; two-ton intermediates became the norm.

Deeper into the '70s, the Trans Am (and Corvette) were all that serious performance fans could look to in showrooms. The 220-hp W72/four-speed powertrain package was available into 1979. The '70s were a dark time for performance--the best engine on offer in a 1982 Trans Am rated just 165 horsepower. Did the Trans Am's inevitable comedown seem less horrific, since it had carried the performance banner longer than just about any other car extant, or did the sudden, sharp decline make it all the more painful? At least the Trans Am's WS6 package kept the code's reputation for fierce handling with minimal ride degradation.

The third-gen Trans Am was one of the first big steps forward after the darkness of the 1970s--one of a generation of cars that got better as time went on. To wit, by the mid-1980s, power seemed to emerge from its dozen-year slumber as computerized engine management allowed engineers to wrap their heads around emissions controls and high-horsepower engines simultaneously. Move on five years, and the Trans Am had 50 more horsepower on tap (nearly a third more!) than the hottest '82 model. Suddenly, the Trans Am could once again live up to the performance potential that its aero-styled sheetmetal promised.

The '87 Trans Am seen here uses the Tuned-Port Injection 305 that was 1986's top engine; the following year, GM dropped its TPI system onto the Chevy 350, making for a 225-hp cruiser that was top of the F-body food chain in '87. Mix in transcendent handling, courtesy of the WS6 suspension package (a 36-mm front and 24-mm rear sway bar, specific Delco gas-charged shocks, 96 lb/in front springs and 23 lb/in rear springs, limited-slip differential, quick 12.7:1 steering box, and 245/45/16 Goodyear Gatorback tires on 16 x 8-inch wheels) and the lack of T-tops that can quell chassis flex and aid the suspension's stick, and you've got a machine that remained one of the most potent all-around performance cars of its era. It ascended to reclaim the second-gen T/A's bargain status. Plus, with late-'80s T/As' lower production numbers (with Formula and GTA to choose from, the base Trans Am's numbers fell from almost 49,000 in 1986 to barely 21,000 in '87, and plummeted further as the '80s wore on) and the image of the third-gen F as being disposable (perceived as being full of cheap plastics, unfixable electronics and wiring tangles), you'd think that an example as clean and as together as Stuart's might be enough to get collector interest going.

Heaven knows Stuart had a hard time finding this one--and this was back in 1998, more than a decade and a half ago, when third-gen F-bodies were just used cars. "I was originally looking for a GTA, but when I saw this one advertised in the paper, I couldn't pass it up." That was 1998, and it had less than 9,000 miles on the clock. "There are so few low-mile, original, unrestored examples left--I'm so glad I left mine unmodified, stock and original." Today, it's at 28,000 miles: "I drove it the first year, then intended to use it primarily as a show car/toy," he tells us. Since then, he's only replaced the battery and the tires, although finding correct Gatorbacks has been an issue (see Owner's View sidebar).

But here's the hitch: As quickly as the third-gen Trans Am evolved up from 1982-'87, its evolution continued. It wasn't long after this car's birth that Pontiac built a run of Firebirds with intercooled Buick Turbo V-6 engines (vastly under-) rated at 245 horsepower; 350-powered third-gens T/As saw 240 horses in their last days. Fourth-gen Firebirds (which shared partial chassis architecture with the third-gens) started out with 275-hp aluminum-headed LT1s in '93, and by 1998, LS1-infused models shared engines with the Corvette and were (again under-) rated at 305 hp. A decade after the car on these pages was built, V-6-powered Firebird models were rated at 200 hp--roughly where this car stands. And the perpetual evolution continues.

Today's Camaro and Mustang V-6 models have 300+hp V-6 base engines, with V-8s in the 420-hp range--more than double what this Trans Am is putting out. Unlike the original muscle car era, which is typically considered to have lasted from either '64-'72 or '60-'74, depending on how you define things, the current performance car era hasn't stopped. It's still going, and it doesn't look like it will yield anytime soon. In that light, of course 205 hp is going to wither in comparison.

And so, no, a 205-net-horsepower Trans Am isn't necessarily garnering the street cred from the collector world that, say, a 335-gross-horsepower 383 Road Runner would, even though they reside in the same slot in the automotive pantheon as base-level performance cars, bought and driven and loved by the masses. The remaining few that survive become somewhat special, both on their own merits and by representing what was once common in their era. But stir in Boomer antipathy for cars that weren't built before 1972, and suddenly a mid-third-generation Trans Am is a very nice car that collectors don't seem to have a lot of time for.
Maybe we're looking at things all wrong.

scottmoyer

In terms of all-out power, a mid-15-second quarter-mile time isn't going to light anyone's hair on fire, and we fear that the Trans Am name might have peoples' expectations slightly askew. Rather than keep the muscle car flame lit like the second-gen model did, Pontiac managed to pull off an even greater trick: It made one of America's great Gran Turismo (GT) cars. We don't mean a generic sort of GT that has blackout trim and fat alloy wheels. The pocket definition is that of a sporting 2+2 that can effortlessly devour vast distances at high speeds in supreme comfort, while accommodating enough luggage for a long weekend. It's a nebulous definition, living in the gray area between sports car, coupe, and 2+2. A proper GT is all of these, and none of them. Sports cars can be rough-and-tumble; coupes tend to possess both proper back seats (if not quite the headroom to accommodate passengers) and ample luggage space; and 2+2s just need that vestigial back seat to qualify.

There are plenty of exceptions to reinforce the rule, but comfort is the key that fires a GT. But comfort means more than just leather seats. It's a softer suspension that absorbs, rather than transmits, every imperfection on the road. It's the ability to hear Puccini without straining over the engine noise; power is important, but it can't be high-strung. It's an airy cabin with luxury trimmings that doesn't crowd you, which means a larger chassis. Power options--locks, windows--enter into the discussion. It could well be a recipe for a sensory deprivation tank--power this and cushy that. In truth, there's still plenty of driving pleasure available, but at the same time, the GT isn't crying out for your attention at every revolution of the engine. It's a sports car that knows when to shut up.

Pontiac pushed things in that direction with the GTA, which was a $2,700 option in 1987. What the original owner bought, what Stuart found, and what this car still is, is a GTA minus a few cubes and rear disc brakes. With the WS6, 16-inch wheels, limited-slip diff, leather and floor mats adding up to $500, the first owner managed to save himself almost two grand. Stuart won't have pocketed the savings, but his enjoyment will pay dividends for years to come. "I've owned four third-gen F-bodies, three of which were Trans Ams. This one has been my favorite of all of them. This was my first car, and I have absolutely no intention of ever selling it."

When will the third-gen Trans Am join the pantheon of performance cars that deserve respect among the greater car-collector community at large? The line starts here.

Owner's View
I was originally looking for a GTA, but when I saw this one for sale in the Newsday classifieds, I couldn't pass it up. This is still one of the nicest-handling cars I've driven. The WS6 suspension really makes the car handle and corner beautifully; it's a great machine to drive on winding back roads as well as on the highway. Correct tires are hard to find--the original 245/50-16 Goodyear Gatorback tires have been discontinued for years, and no one is reproducing them.--Stuart S

Club Scene

National Firebird and T/A Club
P.O. Box 11238
Chicago, Illinois 60611
773-769-7166
www.firebirdtaclub.com
Dues: $35/year • Membership: 2,100

Pontiac Oakland Club International
P.O. Box 68
Maple Plain, Minnesota 55359
877-368-3454
www.poci.org
Dues: $35/year • Membership: 8,800

PROS
+ Slick style has aged well
+ Transcendent handling
+ Isn't valued highly--great for buyers

CONS
- Isn't valued highly -- terrible for sellers
- Good power for its day
- Good luck finding one this clean

What to Pay
Low = $3,000
Average = $6,000
High = $10,000

1987 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am
Specifications
Price
Base price: $13,259
Price as profiled: $17,187
Options on car profiled: LB9 V-8 engine, $745; air conditioning, $775; WS6 special performance package, $385; AM/FM stereo with seek and scan, $217; automatic transmission, $490; power windows, $210; power locks, $145; tilt wheel, $125; tinted glass, $120; rear-window defogger, $145; Leather Appointment Group, $75; power antenna, $70; remote decklid release, $50; color-keyed seat belts, $26; floor mats, $35; body side moldings, $55; continuous-cycle wipers, $55; lamp group, $34; heavy-duty battery, $26; manual seat adjust delete ($35 credit)

Engine
Type: GM "corporate" (Chevrolet) small-block OHV V-8; cast-iron block and cylinder heads
Displacement: 305 cubic inches (5.0 liters)
Bore x stroke: 3.74 inches x 3.48 inches
Compression ratio: 9.3:1
Horsepower @ RPM: 205 @ 4,400
Torque @ RPM: 285 lb.ft. @ 3,200
Valvetrain: Hydraulic valve lifters
Main bearings: 5
Fuel system: GM Tuned-Port Injection
Lubrication system: Pressure, gear-type pump
Electrical system: 12-volt
Exhaust system: Single exhaust with cross-flow muffler and twin tail pipes

Transmission
Type: GM 700-R4 four-speed automatic with overdrive
Ratios:
1st: 3.06:1
2nd: 1.63:1
3rd: 1.00:1
4th: 0.70:1
Reverse: 2.29:1

Differential
Type: GM "9-bolt" housing with limited-slip differential
Ratio: 2.73:1

Steering
Type: Recirculating ball, power assist
Turns, lock-to-lock: 2.5
Ratio: 12.7:1
Turning circle: 36.7 feet

Brakes
Type: Hydraulic, vacuum assist
Front: 10.5-inch disc
Rear: 9.5-inch drum

Chassis & Body
Construction: Welded unit-body
Body style: Two-door coupe
Layout: Front engine, rear-wheel drive

Suspension
Front: Independent, modified MacPherson strut, coil springs; anti-roll bar
Rear: Rigid axle; torque arm; coil springs; two trailing links; Panhard rod; anti-roll bar

Wheels & Tires
Wheels: GM cast aluminum
Front: 16 x 8 inches
Rear: 16 x 8 inches
Tires: Goodyear Eagle VR "Gatorback"
Front: 245/50-16
Rear: 245/50-16

Weights & Measures
Wheelbase: 101 inches
Overall length: 191.6 inches
Overall width: 72 inches
Overall height: 49.7 inches
Front track: 60.7 inches
Rear track: 61.6 inches
Shipping weight: 3,274 pounds

Capacities
Crankcase: 5 quarts
Cooling system: 15 quarts
Fuel tank: 16.2 gallons
Transmission: 4.7 quarts

Calculated Data
Bhp per cu.in.: 0.672
Weight per bhp: 15.97 pounds
Weight per cu.in.: 10.734 pounds

Production
Pontiac produced 88,612 Firebirds for the 1987 model year.
A total of 21,788 of these were Trans Ams.

Performance
Acceleration:
0-60 MPH: 7.4 seconds
0-100 MPH: 20.8 seconds
1/4-mile ET: 15.3 seconds @ 89 MPH
Top speed: 134 MPH
*From a June 1987 Car and Driver road test of a 1987 Firebird Formula with the LB9 205-hp 5.0-liter V-8, five-speed manual transmission and 3.45:1 axle ratio.

Stuart S

Thanks, Scott!

BumpaD82

I recently read the article (I get the print magazine) ...

AWESOME !!!

I emailed the editor and thanked him for this and the IROC feature !

p.s. I did notice the "dirty wheels" .. But oh well

Gateway

I had the pleasure of seeing this car in person.

MintWS6FORMULA

Scott, thanks for reposting the article. I'm not a sub'r to HMM, (Yet?), but bought first mag the other day when I noticed the letters and photos by third gen Bird owners in response to this feature.

I'm impressed with the knowledge this writer had, he gets our cars and the mentality of the collector car world (maybe he owns one himself?).

I'll have to keep this mag in mind to sub to. Hopefully there will be more Birds (of all years) and third gens. Unfortunately, the car mags and car-flipping shows all but ignore most Birds and post '69 Camaros.

High Performance Pontiac - they don't get it.

Stuart S

fire

I have an 87 Trans am and I think that is is so cool that you got your in a mag. It a great looking car.

Stuart S

Thanks!

formulacc1

Great article!!! Third gens deserve WAY more respect than they get for carrying the performance banner through the 80's (AND early 90's)!!!!!