1989 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 20th Anniversary

by CarLustBlog.com at 10:03 AM PDT, May 16, 2009

Over the last year of increasingly dire news coming out of Detroit, it has become trendy to dismiss General Motors as a company operating without inspiration--a bland, risk-averse company in difficult financial straits because it has been building bland, risk-averse cars since 1975. It's an easy stereotype, but, like most stereotypes, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For one thing, GM has built genuinely innovative and risky vehicles--it's just that most were also fatally flawed (among them the Pontiac Fiero, Chevrolet Citation, Cosworth Vega, Pontiac Aztek ...). And there have also been some truly world-class cars; unfortunately, they are tainted by the company's public failures. Not even the bright light of the Cadillac Seville STS could escape the abject black hole of awfulness created by the Cadillac Cimarron (excuse me, Cimarron by Cadillac).

But even more than the noble failures and the legitimate stars, the truest evidence of GM's inspiration comes in its spurts of odd, unexpected greatness. Every so often GM puts out products so weird and fantastic that they must have horrified the company's stifling layers of bureaucracy. I can't help imagining a team of wild-eyed enthusiasts caged up within the corporate monolith who periodically escape and produce irrationally fun cars before their masters track them down and sedate them.

For a 15-year stretch, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, these fanatics used the black magic of turbocharging to energize GM's ubiquitous but dull pushrod 3.8-liter and 4.3-liter V-6s. And likewise, those newly swaggering engines served as the smoking and bubbling chemical elixir that morphed the stolid, soft, Dr. Jekyll vehicles of the GM lineup (Buck Regal, Chevy S-10) into the wild, animalistic Mr. Hydes (Buick GNX, GMC Syclone/Typhoon). From the original Buick Regal Turbo through to the Grand National and GNX, and finally to the Syclone/Typhoon, the formula of a turbo V-6 and some subtle tweaks turned completely ordinary cars into wonderfully unlikely Ferrari-killers.

After watching the heroic turbo 3.8-liter V-6 transform the meek Regal personal luxury coupe into a beastly, asphalt-consuming muscle car, I wondered exactly what that glorious engine could do under the hood of a real performance car. You know, something low, aerodynamic, and fundamentally built for speed in a way that the Regal simply was not.

Enter the Pontiac Firebird. When I posted about the third-generation Pontiac Firebird back in 2008, I lauded the 3G Firebird's threteningly wedgy lines thusly:

"There wasn't a cheesy bone in the new Firebird's body--at least not yet. Pontiac would eventually tart up the Firebird with screaming chicken decals and goofy scoops, but when the new Firebird debuted in 1982, it was deadly serious and a bit evil. Its European-inspired low wedge design evoked threat; its hidden headlights and serious "face" imparted a sinister aspect, and its front turn-signal "eyes" glittered evilly. Imagine glancing up in your rearview mirror and seeing that Firebird--it was a look designed to inspire damp-palmed terror."

Unfortunately, the Firebird only looked sinister; in terms of performance it had all the menace of Ned Flanders. Even as Pontiac pumped up the Trans Am's visual horsepower, adding back the screaming chicken decals and goofy overdone details, it lagged behind the Camaro and Mustang in the front line of the 1980s muscle car wars. Sure, the Trans Am eventually received the big 5.7-liter V-8; but it was a detuned version of the Camaro's--which was itself a detuned version of the Corvette's. The Firebird was a good handler; it was just lacking the Vitamin H to back up its gorgeous lines.

In 1989, the GM struck again; they applied the GNX's world-beating turbocharged and intercooled V-6 to the underpowered Firebird with spectacular results. Unlike the Regal or the S-10, the Firebird was born to run, and with the turbo V-6 it ran with the best in the world.

The turbo Trans Am finally had the grunt to match its looks. Car and Driver managed a 4.6-second 0-60 run; that's still extreme performance today and simply mind-blowing in 1989. It also handled well and topped out at more than 160 mph. Forget about bit players like the Mustang and Camaro--they weren't even in the same game. The turbo Firebird smoked the nominal GM performance icon, the Corvette, and out-accelerated the expensive Italians, the Ferrari Testarossa and Lamborghini Countach. Again, that's serious speed. If you wanted a clearly faster car in 1989, you had to step up to the unavailable exotics--the Porsche 959 and Ferrari F40.

It's hard to believe that such performance was possible simply by turbocharging the same trustworthy but somnolent 3.8-liter V-6 that could be found under the hood of my grandmother's 1985 Buick LeSabre. With turbocharger and intercooler affixed (and, obviously, some other internal modifications), the turbo V-6 was very conservatively rated at 250 horsepower. Most think the true number was somewhere north of 300 horsepower. Even through the TA's four-speed automatic, the turbo V-6 delivered its thrust like an F-15 on afterburner--smooth, but with an impact like a sledgehammer to the chest.

One of the best things about the 20th Anniversary Firebird Trans Am was that somehow, magically, it was a sleeper. Try to wrap your mind around that--it was a sleeper Trans Am, if such a thing is possible. The turbo Firebird was comparatively unadorned, without graphics or ostentation--it only came in sleek, clean, white trim.

Compare it to its V-8 Trans Am sibling; the Trans Am had the V-8 brawn and all the visual braggadoccio, but the turbo TA was a cold, remorseless killer. The Trans Am was Mr. T; the turbo TA was Robert Patrick's T-1000 from Terminator 2. One looked tough; the other would rip the tough guy's head off without breaking stride changing expression.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the 20th Anniversary TA is a stunningly compelling car. The car was quicker than even the mighty Trans Am SD-455 of yore and upstaged the Corvette; doing that with a turbo V-6 Trans Am in a plain white wrapper took some audacity. The turbo TA also has rarity in its side; the fanatics only produced 1,555 examples before the corporate no-fun police were able to restrain them.

Now that GM is, for the most part, producing genuinely good cars, I find myself missing the oddballs--the Regals, Firebirds, and S-10s turned into superheroes with an application of turbo pixie dust. Before you go bankrupt, GM, would you please scrounge up some of those 1980s-era 3.8-liter turbo V-6s and drop them into something completely unexpected? Like a Buick LaCrosse, perhaps, or a Saturn Aura? just for old times' sake? Please, just one last time, let the turbocharging fanatics out of their cage.

The lovely 20th Anniversary Trans Am pictured here was listed at cars-on-line.com for a cool $39,850 and recently sold. That's a lot of money for a 1989 Trans Am, but given the rarity, the perfect condition, and the fact that it has only 1,210 miles on the clock, it sounds reasonable.

The below video below pits a Turbo Trans Am against a new Mitsubishi Evo on the drag strip. As usual with YouTube drag-race videos, the probability of major modifications makes drawing any broad conclusions pointless. Nevertheless, it's still rather satisfying to see yesterday's all-but-forgotten muscle car completely eviscerate one of the fastest representatives of today's trendy Fast and the Furious generation. It makes me smile every time I watch it.

--Chris H.

In topics: Car Lust