I have been darned sure that the '82 and '83 Trans Am had 15" wheels, 215/65R15 tires. My '83's did, for sure. Friend sent me this print ad today, he was specifically poking fun at the wheel/tire package. That's either gotta be a mis-print or a early ad before things were finalized....

PS. Note the cleaver working of the "dual free flowing resonator", exhaust.

 

Some had that. Some had some sort of 14" wheel package. So NO, that ad is more or less accurate, in terms of what you could go down to the corner and buy, in 1982. Yes, the base model had 14" pizza-cutters; the "improved" had 15" ... slightly less effective pizza-cutters. The 15" ones were a YYYYYYYYUUUUUUUUUUUJJJJJJJE upgrade over the 14". You'd have to have been there to appreciate it, especially on 1982 tires.

I've never been a Firebird person. I've always leaned towards the Camaro aesthetic. Even though once you strip away the cup holders and "shiny"s, they're THE SAME CAR underneath. The Camaro is the straight-ahead American hotrod. Not abuncha "option P53 triggered R71 and that's the only way you could get T64" and "my car is rare because it's kaopectate green with babypuke brown vinyl top and dogvomityuck interior and there are only 79 with that combo" and "this car is worth $17800 but I bought it off of craigslist for $675" CRAP. Firebird owner mouth diarrhea.

I just wanna go fast. The rest of that "rare" crap has no attraction to me whatsoever.

That said, when the 82 Camaro pace car came out, and I saw one on my way home from work one afternoon, I DAMN NEAR FILLED THE CUP ON THE SPOT driving up the road. (Getwell Rd in Memphis approaching Park Ave coming north in Sept-Oct 1981, for those who might know the place) I think I mighta exercised constraint and stroked more slowly for awhile and filled it when I got home; had to hold it for like 10 or maybe even 15 minutes since it was rush hour. (I lived near Summer & Graham then) I wanted one of those SO BAD that day. Then the very next weekend, I went to the stealership and drove one. It SUCKED. It ate BLUE DONKEY ***** without hesitation reservation or equivocation. Reminded me of the very first TBI car I ever came across... I want to say, 80, 81, somewhere in there... I went somewhere on a business trip, probably north Texas if I were to guess, and when I landed and went to the rental car lot, they gave me a ... iunno, a Citation I think, let's say. 2.5 TBI. I was intrigued. Curious. (yellow) I took the air cleaner lid off and looked, and lo! and behold, there was a ... something or other ... not a carb ... perched above the throttle bore, literally PISSING fuel into there. The car ran GREAT. started up every time, idled smooth no matter what, always ran smooth and even, had somewhat "OK" power; just, no whoooma whooooma. No excitement. No .. fill the cup. (I'm not too much of a "shiny thing" person) Imagine how disappointed I was when I went to the stealership after I saw that BEAUTIFUL 5.0 Z28 pace car, and drove it, and it was EXACTLY the same as the Citation, and I popped the hood, and there were TWO of those things peeing down into the throttles. 2.5 vs 5.0. The SAME tractor motor crap, only twice as much, and in a car that weighed ... about twice as much. (or nearly so) It drove like a EFFFFFFFFFFING TRACTOR. I was CRUSHED that such a STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL car could be so LAME. Imagine, the prettiest girl you ever met or saw or even ever heard of or saw in a movie or the pr0nz or whatever, but there's NOTHING between the ears. Total zero. Doesn't even realize that if an escalator stops it just turns into stairs and she can go up it anyway, or that the Sun and Moon are 2 different things. Total disappointment on every level. NADA. That's what it was like. The carbed (LG4) cars were EVEN WORSE. Those, if you've ever driven say a 74 Impala or something, were JUST LIKE that, except even LESS since the Impala had a 350 and this ... POS ... was a 305. Plus it enjoyed all the things we love to hate about carbs. Hard to believe now I know, butt, that's how it was in fall 1981 when those cars came out.

I bought a L69 car when they came out. Completely put those CFI cars to shame. I traded in a 79 Z28 4-spd on it, and still kept a 78 Z28 auto that I had as a beater for some time afterwards. Both of those were silver with red interior and stripes. The 78 was SUCH a pig compared to the 79, mostly because of the T-350 vs the T-10, but the 83 L69 car was as much different from either of those as our cars are from a Chevette. (weight aside)

The 14" wheels back in those days was part of that. We ALL knew WE COULD DO BETTER than that, even then, butt ... no. I don't CARE how "shiny" they ever made those 14" wheels; to me, they just looked ... like ... SLOW ... CRAPPY ... STONE AGE ... OBSOLETE ... crap. Going to buy tires for that CRAP even then, let alone today, should drive that point home to those who have/had them.

No amount of ad copy will EVER disabuse me of the disappointment of actually DRIVING those 82 Camaro and Firebird disappointments. They "looked" GREAT; butt apart from "looks", they SUCKED. Butt, I guess in the grand scheme of things, they were, at the very least, among GM's first attempts to crawl out of the mire of the 70s "malaise" era. Yeah, maybe they didn't hit it out of the park; butt it was the first evidence that they were at least TRYING. The Firebird though, in spite of its overall BEAUTIFUL "styling", was altogether slower, sloppier, heavier, lamer, more plastic and bulges, not "trim" or "svelte" regardless of aero (which they DEFINITELY had worked hard to optimize), wallowed around freeway ramps worse, and all that, than the Camaro. I guess it comes down to the difference between "show" and "go". Put me off of Firebirds FOREVER, as if I wasn't already alienated by all the "rare" crap their owners always seemed infatuated with for all the years before that and since.

 

I've had 3 82s. Two came w 15 inch bowling ball wheels. One came w 14 inch bowling ball wheels. The two w the 15s were better optioned. The one w the 14s was a stripper model trans am. It had no options, not even a good scoop. They all had the dual resonator exhaust, it was poorest flowing crappiest, best sounding exhaust ever, it was totally weird.

 

Level II suspension with tiny sway bars and 14"x7" wheels was standard on '82-84 Trans Ams. Level III suspension with
quick steering box, big sway bars, and 15"x7" wheels was optional on base LG4 carb V8 and required with the CFI and
L69 engines.

 

Yep, that exhaust sounded awesome....while strangling power.

They made 14" aero wheels/caps, huh? Crazy. I learned a thing today. GM sure made it easy to F-these cars up w/terrible options. Man. 14" wheels on a freakin' Trans Am. That's embarrasin'. Like the cheesy 15" wheels on the '84 'Vette. Dumb.

 

Great history lesson sofakingdom.

 

The ‘84 Corvette never came with 15” wheels stock, though. GM was originally going to offer 15” wheels on the base models, but they decided to go with the 16” wheels across the board at the last minute. If you watch some of the early promotional videos on YouTube about the upcoming ‘84 Corvette, you can see the different style 15” wheels on some of them. However, when it came time for the car to be released to the public in March 1983, they decided to go with the 16” diameter wheels for all models.

I remember the 14” bowling ball cap wheels on the lower spec ‘82-‘83 Trans Am. The funny thing was, at the time, I didn’t know they came in two sizes. Sometimes I’d see a ‘82-‘83 Trans Am and notice the wheels looked a little funny, like they were too small or something. Then, I’d see another one and the wheels looked better/bigger. Of course, I preferred the bigger wheels because they visually filled out the wheel wells better, but I couldn’t put my finger on why some looked a little funny and why some looked a little better until I found out (many years later) that they came in two different sizes, 14” and 15”. lol!