1989 Pontiac Turbo Trans Am: The Anniversary Car With a Buick Heart

The car that paced the 73rd Indianapolis 500 in May 1989 was a Pontiac Trans Am with no V-8 in it. Under the hood was a turbocharged 3.8-liter Buick V-6, and behind the program stood a California engineering firm. Wikipedia's history of Production Automotive Services, drawing on a Hot Rod feature by Thomas A. DeMauro, says PAS engineering liaison Scott Kelly was responsible for every Trans Am used at the Speedway that month, including the three actual pace cars. TurboTransAm.com describes the 1,555 customer cars as replicas of the pace car. For the Trans Am's 20th anniversary, Pontiac had borrowed its most celebrated engine from another division.^1,2

The engine needed a home. The Autopian recalls that the turbocharged V-6 came from the Buick Grand National, which had ended production in 1987. The same Wikipedia entry credits Bill Owen at Pontiac Motor Division with making the anniversary car a special one, and it names PAS, whose president was Jeff Beitzel, as the contractor that outfitted the engines. That is a collective story, not a single inventor's: a Pontiac product man, an outside engineering company, a Buick powertrain and General Motors' assembly plant all had a hand in it. Those roles come from later accounts rather than Pontiac's own records, and they say nothing about who decided what, or when, beyond the names themselves.^3,2

The work moved back and forth across California. According to Wikipedia's summary of the Hot Rod account, the contract went to PAS, and the engine work took place in its 40,000-square-foot City of Industry facility. The finished engines were shipped to General Motors and installed in the cars, which then went back to PAS for testing and quality-control checks before they were offered for sale. The Autopian adds that fitting the engine into the Firebird's narrower bay required different cylinder heads and exhaust headers from the Grand National's. TurboTransAm.com lists a Garrett T3 turbocharger at 16.5 psi of boost and a four-speed 200-4R automatic, the only transmission the package offered.^2,3,1,4

Its rating is disputed, and the dispute is the point. The Autopian says Pontiac quoted 250 horsepower, and TurboTransAm.com gives 250 horsepower and 345 lb-ft. MuscleCarClub's engine table lists 245 horsepower and 340 lb-ft. All of them are net figures. The Autopian reports that Car and Driver estimated the engine at at least 300 horsepower. Whatever the true output, the published ratings already put the V-6 above the V-8s in the same showroom: MuscleCarClub lists the 5.7-liter L98 at 235 horsepower, the 5.0-liter LB9 at 225 and the throttle-body 5.0 at 170. The anniversary Trans Am was the most powerful Firebird of 1989 on paper, with two fewer cylinders.^3,1,5

The magazines confirmed what the ratings only hinted at. The Autopian reports that Car and Driver ran its Turbo Trans Am from 0 to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds, 0.3 seconds quicker than it had timed the Buick GNX, and that it was the fastest production car the magazine tested that year. TurboTransAm.com repeats the 4.6-second figure. Those numbers belong to one test car in one magazine, reported here second-hand, and they are not a specification. They do place the Turbo Trans Am next to the Buick GNX whose engine family it shared, and, by that one magazine's clock, a step ahead of it.^3,1

The numbers show how narrow a slice of the Firebird line it was. MuscleCarClub counts 64,404 Firebirds for 1989: 32,376 base cars, 16,670 Formulas, 5,727 Trans Ams and 9,631 GTAs. The GTA Source Page's transcription of GM option-usage printouts agrees on 9,631 GTAs and, importantly, counts the 1,555 Turbo Trans Ams inside that figure under code Y82, all with the LC2 turbo engine and automatic transmission. That makes the anniversary car about 16 percent of the GTA count and about 2.4 percent of all Firebirds. The rest of the GTAs split 7,553 with the 5.7-liter L98 and 523 with the five-speed 5.0-liter LB9, and those three engine rows add exactly to 9,631.^5,4

Buyers paid for the privilege. The Autopian gives the original price as $31,223, a nominal figure from a secondary account rather than a Pontiac price list. The cars were white, with gold honeycomb wheels and functional hood scoops, according to TurboTransAm.com, and The Autopian says the pace-car door and windshield decals were optional. It also breaks the 1,555 down to include three convertibles and 40 hardtops, with the remainder hatch-roof cars; Wikipedia adds that Beitzel's own pilot car was one of five pilots and was turned into a convertible by ASC. Those breakdowns are reported without a factory table behind them and are kept as reported claims.^3,1,2

The option printout supplies harder context for the whole GTA run the Turbo Trans Am sat inside. Of 9,631 GTAs, 7,519 had the removable hatch roof, about 78 percent. The 3.27 axle went into 9,108 cars and the 3.45 into 523, the same number as the manual-transmission LB9 cars. White paint, code 40U, is counted at 3,224, a figure that matches the page's printed percentage and its molding row even though the paint row itself reads 3,324. Camel leather was the favorite interior at 3,680. The printout covers GTAs sold worldwide, not just in the United States: 952 were Canadian releases, 204 went to GM Overseas export and 166 carried California emissions equipment.⁴

The anniversary car also closed a circle, whether or not anyone intended it. The first Trans Ams of 1969, Old Cars Weekly reports, were painted Cameo White with blue stripes, and there were 697 of them by the commonly published count; twenty model years later the anniversary car was again white, again a limited edition, and built in 1,555 examples. The 1969 car had borrowed a racing series' name for a $5 royalty. The 1989 car borrowed a sister division's engine. Both times Pontiac used a small, carefully defined package to say something about what the Trans Am stood for, and both times the package was rarer than the legend that grew up around it.^6,4,1

What remains disputed should stay that way until better records surface. The power rating sits at 245 or 250 horsepower depending on the source, with a magazine estimate well above both. The body-style breakdown of the 1,555 rests on an enthusiast article and a Wikipedia summary. The price rests on a single secondary account. What is not disputed is the core: 1,555 Turbo Trans Ams, all automatics, all with the Buick-derived LC2, counted inside 9,631 GTAs in a 64,404-car Firebird year, one of them leading the field at Indianapolis. For a car that was a footnote to the Firebird line by volume, it made a large mark, and it did so with a V-6.^4,5,3,1