To all the gta guys out there how rare are the "ups" brown 1987 gta's ?

Reason I ask is cause I found one at a dealership and it also had those euro paddle style mirrors.I have only seen one just like it on ebay last year.Car is mint and had the 350 tpi.Gonna find out how much they are asking on Monday.

 

My brother had one about 8-9 years ago until his girlfriend had a baby then he traded it for a 4 door car it's the only one i have ever seen.

 

I've only ever seen one in person at the T/A Nats several years ago and it was eat up with rust in the rear quarters. The one that was eBay last year was the second example.

According to my figures from PMD, there were 9,481 GTAs made in '87. That color (68U) was only put on 372 Trans Ams in 1987; the numbers for GTAs were not separated that year from Trans Am production as they were later on. Still, I imagine that the number of brown GTAs would be pretty low.

I mean a lot of us have seen a lot of 1987 GTAs in our "travels".... but no one has really seen these brown cars. So you do the math.... if they were not pretty darn rare we'd have seen them, IMO.

 

Actually I would not be surprised if the Brown was only a GTA color... As I have seen several GTA's in brown but none in Silver... Actually a way to find out is to look at the dealer info, If there is no call out for a secondary color for the Trans Am, then I would bet that it was a GTA color only. Kind of like Yellow was a Formula color only in 1987 & 1988.

John

 

Just as I thought, The Brown #68 for the T/A was monochrome only, therefore it was GTA only, I do not beleive you could get a T/A monochrome.

However according to the exterior color chart for 1987 you could get the brown for the BASE firebird with #60 Champagne Gold Metallic as a secondary color. NA for Formula

John

 

I saw one last summer at a cruise night. It looks way better than it sounds, lol.

 

I called the dealer it's sold

 

I would not want a Formula in that color, but on the GTA, it looked reasonably nice. It reminded me of the Burgandy color, but brown... I guess if I worked for UPS I would look for one

John

 

The one I saw reminded me of Jesse James' Viper

 

Good call, John. My order sheet for 1987 does not show the brown used on anything but the GTA and as the accent color you mentioned for the base Firebird.

The car that I saw I thought looked very nice; it's a subtle color. The three other guys with me all hated it. The GTA I saw had the early '87 lighter colored gold wheels on it and it really looked good in combination with the brown exterior. Also the camel interior color was not so strong and overpowering, either; it balanced nicely with the darker exterior.

 

Actually I find it amazing how many things are like that, but no one picks up on it. For example we all know that the 5 Speed was not available with a 350. But people will state that there were 100,000 cars that year and only 10,000 got the 5 speed thats as close as you can get... In reality If you state that there were 12,000 350 cars made, then that only leaves the 88,000 that could have come with the 5 Speed. It brings the ratio up and we are one step closer to figuring out the exact number...

Here is an example:
In 1989,
the Base firebird got ONLY the LB8 V6 and LO3 V8
The Formula were available with the LO3, LB9 & L98
The Trans Am and GTA were only available with the LB9 and L98.

According to some sources there were 64404 TOTAL Firebirds made. Of those we know that there
32,376 Base Firebirds
16,670 Formulas
5,727 T/A's
9,631 GTA's

Also we know that there were
LB8 24,968
L03 18,362
LB9 6,478
L98 13,041
LC2 1,555

We know that only the Base Firebird got the V6 so there were
24,968 Base V6 Firebirds.
7,408 LO3 Firebirds

Therefore there were
10,954 LO3 Formulas

WE know that there were 1555 TTA's and I believe these were all GTA's so that brings the total down to 8076 GTA's.

From that information we can gather that there were
19,519 TPI systems produced for the Firebird in 1989.

Therefore there were
5,716 TPI powered Formulas and
5,727 TPI powered T/A's (all of them)
8,076 TPI powered GTA's

We cant break out the exact number of 350 and 305 TPI cars because of the information we have... BUT were a step closer...

John

 

Isnt number crunching fun

Nice work John.

IMO the Brown 87 GTA's look great.

 

i have one and I have to say that the paint was in horrible condition when I bought it. Actually there wasn't much brown left. So I wasn't too thrilled about how the faded brown looked. I even considered a color change till I realized how rare they were. So I went ahead and painted it the original color.

When I went to pick it up from the shop, I loved it. Out of the bright sun it looks UPS brown and sometime black. When the sun hits it, it looks awsome. I has some beautifull coopper fakes with a little pearl to it.

I love it. Too bad I have to paint it again thanks to a dually backing into it.

This is how it looks in the sun. (No Frankie, this is not a bad Flame Red, this is a Russet in the sun )
Not my car BTW. I got this from the GTA Source Page, thanks Frankie

 

I was under the impression they were actually considered Trans-Ams and NOT GTAs. Though it would account for the unusually high ratio of GTA vs Trans-Ams

 

the GM paperwork states Turbo GTA and the dealer invoice also state GTA with a 5.0 liter engine .... later replaced with the LC2 by PAS ....

 

Hi gmendoza!
By chance, did you get the original paperwork from PHS or the original owner?
I ask because, back in 1987, I always hung around Pontiac dealerships, and one dealership by me at the time, pennisular Pontiac in Torrance, calif., got in 2 brown GTAs.
I thought they looked pretty good in that color, with the gold accents and such!

Just wondering,

George