I asked this question earlier but nobody replied so I'm going to try and reword it.

The GTA I had, was just over #24,000 produced that year, yet had the breakaway mirrors. As I understand the breakaway mirrors were replaced after about 200 GTA were produced. (Info I saw on this site somewhere)

So my question is : can this be right, could only 200 (or less) GTA's have been produced after 24,000 Firebirds had been produced?

Does anybody with a 87 GTA have the breakaway mirrors (rectangle)? If so, where (approx) is your production number out of 88,612.

I'm just trying to figure out if GM only made 200 GTA's within the first 24,000 firebirds produced.

Did they make these at 2-different plants? Norwood & ?. Maybe one plant started with a higher production number start? IE #20,000 and up?

I'm just confused and would like to figure it out.

Thanks,
Dave

 

There were 2 plants online in 1987. Each one used its own sequence numbers, both starting from 200001 but technically the 2 is meaningless, so actually both starting from 00001. I don't know how many Firebirds each individual plant made, but there were 88612 total Firebirds between the two of them. 11102 of the 88612 were GTA's. If they both made about 44,000 Firebirds I would say it's entirely possible that GTA's weren't produced till 24,000 out of that 44,000. I'm just guessing. I can't remember ever seeing a GTA with a much lower VIN than yours. good luck,

GT

 

I guess that makes sense:

2 plants produced 42,058 firebirds (assuming split), each one did 21,029.

After that they started production of GTA/Trans-am/Formula, which would make sense for the production number of the GTA I had.

But then GTA/Trans-am/Formula wouldn't have been available to the public until 1/2 way through the production year? I would have thought they would have tried to get them to the public quicker. Obviously it would be easier to produce all of the same car at once then change the set up to the next model, so who knows.

Oh well, I may never know for sure. All I do know is I want my GTA back, but I'm having trouble tracking down the current owner.
Hopefully some day!

Thanks for the reply,
Dave

 

they made 88612 Firebirds in 87, not 42558.

 

Actually they made 42,058 Firebirds, 13,164 Formula, 21,788 Trans-Ams and 11,102 GTA's. I know they are all firebirds technically but I was talking base firebirds.

 

ok. But as far as the late intro GTA theory around 24,000 sequence number, I think it's entirely possible. I have heard the same thing about the 200 or so GTA's in 87 getting the euro-mirrors, but I don't know if it was the first 200 GTA's. Maybe they were randomly distributed? No idea.. I hope you find out though.

GT