I'm in the process of sprucing up my 85 Trans Am a bit and noticed the interior is three shades of grey and black. The dash is a dark dark grey, dashpad is black, console, radio housing, and gauge trim is graphite, and all the other plastic (in the rear mostly) is medium grey.

So my interior is basically four colors, which doesn't look "too" bad since it's all grey. But this also applies to cars with red or tan interiors as well....the dash, and console has hints of grey or black and the rest is tan or red.

Why did Pontiac do this?? Why not make the interiors one flowing color? Was it because of cost?

 

Mine was like 5 colors.
Dash is light gray (first dash I'd ever seen that was light gray), as well as all the trim panels.
Console and radio pods are dark gray
Dashpad and rest of the trim are black.

 

What's funny is that they had it right with the early cars. Through 1984, center consoles were black and had the integrated radio pod, so they matched the black dash shell, black intrument panel trim piece, and black dash pad. I don't understand why starting in 85 they did most dash shells black with a dark gray center console, radio pod and instrument panel trim piece. I've dyed my instrument panel trim black, put in a 4th gen black center console, and will dye the radio pod black also. One more note... if you look at the back side of the intrument panel trim piece, it's actually molded in black plastic that they painted gray! WHY???

Zepher, I hope that wasn't factory original. That black and light gray on the dash clash horribly. I can see that, at a minimum, the drivers door sill and kick panel have be changed to black... looks like you swapped the rear plastic to black on the drivers side too.

 

Yeah it's driving me nuts on mine....I think I'm going to leave the console, guage trim, and radio pod graphite grey. But I'm going to redo the dash (minus pad) in the medium grey that's on the seatbelts, kickpanels, door panels and rear hatch trim.

 

Pontiac had some standards for ALL cars... THe Dash bezel (plasitc trim pieces), Radio Pod, and center console were ALL Charcoal Gray from 1985 & up. The Covers for the Door handles, the center console inserts, and instruments were all Black... (1986 & up gages had a graph paper appearance)

THe Trans Am always had BLACK instrument panels and arm rests no matter what color the interior was, the Third color pertained to the interior seat color, and carpet color... Door panel color, rear hatch trim area color and headliner color... If you ordered a RED interior you Got the Seats, Belts, Door pads, Carpet, Floor mats, rear trim area, headliner, in RED.

Now from 1982 - 1986 on the S/E and 1987 & 1988 on the Formula if you ordered a Color inteiror such as RED, or Gray you should have gotten a RED dash, but the Trim around the IP was still Charcoal...

Here is a pic of my (sold) 87 Formula with the Gray interior You can see that much of the interior was Gray, specifically the dash where it would have been Black on the TA...

Make sence or did I confuse you?

 

My interior is gray, but everything as far as dash and concoles go are either black or gray. No different shades like what I'm seeing in your alls cars... mine is an 86 TA

 

The lower trim panels were grey and swapped to black ones and the dash pouch was a grey panel with no pouch. everything else was stock (minus the seat covers).

 

I guess that's why the dash on my 85 Trans Am is really really dark grey and yours is light gray.

Kind of weird they had those kinds of standards.....what were they smoking back then?....or snorting (since it's the 80's)

 

ALL Trans Am's to my knowledge had BLACK door pulls, and a Black Dash... The Garnishments around the IP were ALL Charcoal, no matter the model, as were the Radio Pod and the Center console were Charcoal...

Starting in 1989 however ALL Dashes were BLACK, no matter the model. THe Door pulls I believe were still Color Keyed to the interior color...

John

 

My trans am dash isn't black, the pad is......the dash is more of a really dark grey....darker than the console and guage trim no doubt....but def not black.

 

can you post a picture? people tend to have different opinions on what the consider black vs dark gray

 

My arm rests are tan, my console is dark gray, my dash (cluster cover) is black, the shroud around my inside door pulls/lock is dark gray.

 

My '83 is all black. It makes it a lot easier to find parts when they are all one color.

 

This is definitely not black....I just got back from the autopaint supply shop that sells sem color coat.....when I handed that piece to the salesman the first thing he did was grab a can of sems landau black

There are three colors on my dash: black (dashpad), graphite (the guage trim) and a very dark grey (the color of the piece in the first picture).





This is the interior in my corvette.....now THATS black

 

This isn't my car, but mine is identical. My whole dash looks black except the part right around the gauges. The sun has a different effect on parts too, it fades some things and darkens others.

 

85TransAmFreak, while I kinda get what you're saying about that piece not being a deep dark black like your vette interior, I consider that part to be black. I don't believe it's any lighter in color than the dash shell to which it mounts, the interior panels that are considered to be black or even the 4th gen ebony interior.

80schild- I had no idea they made the "GTA"/deluxe seats and door panels in red. Kinda overpowering.

 

Understandable about the interior colors, but for the sake of matching the interior plastics with correct color coats......you wouldn't want to spray that piece with black paint/dye.....there will be a noticeable difference in the end.

My local paint shop has a computerized scanner that he can put on that piece and custom mix something. I may go that route. I'll check with them this morning sometime if I get a chance.

 

Actually, SEM Landau Black is an EXACT match for that piece.

 

I think it was in '87 only. I have had a heck of a time trying to match those colors . After 21 years some parts look red and others look maroon. My rear plastics look pink, lol.

 

Ok I stand corrected, I gave the piece to my wife and asked her what color that was.....without hesitation she said "black"

So black it is!

 

Keep in mind that many of the plastic pieces were NOT painted, they were the color of the injected moulded plastic... So when they age they do tend to Gray somewhat...

If you look at the DASH on the picture of the Gray interior I posted... ALL that would be BLACK on a Trans Am, or on a Black interior... Interestingly the Gray in that picuture is SEM Presideo (sp?) Gray... Almost an Exact match, I painted the lower piece where it states "Performance Suspension", and you cuold hardly tell in person...

John

 

My 87 GTA is flame red with the carmine red interior. I think it looks awesome. Most of the third gens were black so to see a different color was kinda cool.

 

Coop yours looks awesome, I'm assuming it has low miles? Unfortunately mine has a few rips so I'm going to get them recovered soon.

 

Actually it has about 41k original miles on it.

 

The red interior was only a 1987 color.... and only offered with the Flame Red GTAs. I personally think it's incredible looking; I'd love to have one of those cars for that reason alone.

John, the medium grey color SEM you're referring to is Presidio.

My old '93 Chevy P/U had the medium grey interior in it and I used that color when I added an aftermarket CD stereo and had to recolor the extra dash trim that came with the stereo. It matched the OEM trim color exactly when it dried.

 

I knew it was spelled similar... Thanks... Dyslexia gets the best of me some days...

John

 

That Red interior is awesome. Sweet GTA coop427.

 

this is one of many reasons why i love the 82-84 body styles.
mine is 3 colors. black,charcole grey and light grey. no muss no fuss.