How much the automobile has changed over the last 30 years is admirable, if not eye-opening. In 1991, General Motors and its F-body sports cars were fighting against newer, nimbler competitors from Asia. It was a different time, when 240 horsepower was considered to be the higher-end of the performance spectrum – at least in the affordable sports car market. This retro review from MotorWeek, which takes a closer look at the 1991 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am GTA, – the cream of the crop for Pontiac performance at the time – illustrates just how far we’ve come.
The review starts by highlighting performance – the important stuff. The 1991 Trans Am GTA could sprint from zero to 60 mph in 6.3 seconds while running a 14.9-second quarter-mile at 95 mph. Under the hood sat a 5.7L Corvette-sourced Small Block V8 making 240 horsepower and 340 pound-feet of torque. One downside to the GTA was its fuel economy. While the EPA rated it at 16 mpg city and 24 mpg highway, MotorWeek could only muster 15 mpg during mixed driving.
You may recall that the third-gen Pontiac Firebird rode on GM’s F-body platform shared with the Camaro, but a few design cues helped differentiate it from its corporate cousin. While the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am received revised styling for 1991, the interior remained unchanged, for better and worse. It’s the one place the sports car showed its age thanks to its flat dash of gauges. Everything was big and easy to read, but some of the controls were difficult to reach. Another downside was the awkward trunk, which is limited in space and oddly shaped due to the limitations of the F-body platform.
The 240-horsepower American sports car like the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am GTA commanded a hefty price tag for the time. MotorWeek’s test car had a price of $24,151, which included $675 in options. Today, a new 2019 Chevrolet Camaro with a 2.0L turbo LTG engine making 275 horsepower has a starting price of $25,995. For all the things that change, it also seems to stay the same.
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Comments
The first ever Firebird i see in my country ( near Bilbao,Spain ) was a hard top 1991 GTA Trans Am, then; the view of and american sports car where i live was bit less than a miracle.
Artic White wth black interior, amazing car for my eyes, and all my classmates talking about the car during months; i’ve seen a Pontiac car like the Knight Rider car!! they screams in classroom……….
I was 15 years old
Horsepower was difficult to achieve back in the 1980s and 90s as car builders just didn’t have the technology whereas it’s a different world from today as a naturally aspirated 6.2L V8 makes over 73 hp-per-liter compared with yesteryear’s 5.7L V8 making 42 hp per liter; in the bad old days.. people would be raving if they could get 73 hp per liter from a turbocharged engine.
Thanks for the memories, I remember ordering my 1987 GTA when they first came out, nice car and the front end looked much better then the 1991!
It was rated at 210 HP and I thought that was powerful at the time, now my CTS is 330 HP and my 2018 Grand Sport is 460 HP.
I had forgotten about that awful mid-cycle refresh of the Firebird. The prior model looked so much better, it’s kind of sad. I wonder if this is this from the same folks who refreshed the 2019 Camaro? Makes Dodge look like geniuses with the Challenger.
I think the 1989 Trans Am with Buick Turbo engine was clearly the best of that breed.
Yeah Baby. The Third Gen “FireChickens” is the COOLEST Design when it comes with Looks. My Trans Am is an ’86 “Mean Streeter” Very Macho! Lol! I managed to keep It in Good Shape all through the years, since it was also a Family Car. Then I eventually got into the Mopar Trend of the Retro Style Challenger to this day. But everytime I drive around NYC, and go to “Cruise Nights and Meets, People always ask me ‘How’s your Trans Am?’ That tells you how Cool that Car really is. So I’ve decided to do some resto work on my Bird. I may call myself a Mopar Guy, but I’d always be a ” Bandit” too…?
GM without Pontiac has no soul, no passion, and, yes I would say no excitement. Pontiac in the 1960s and the 1980s and 90s pushed GM forward and kept the other divisions on their toes trying to keep up. Pontiac was forever making silk purses from the proverbial sow’s ear; the GTO, the Fiero, and the STE are examples that come to mind of pretty darn good cars made from pedestrian GM parts.
It’s still a real shame that there’s no longer a band of rebels in Pontiac, Michigan dreaming up schemes to get performance cars past the GM bean counters and into the loving hands of America’s car enthusiasts. GM just isn’t the same without those guys. They are now relegated to history and their deeds have become the stuff of legends.
Back in pre-BK 08 the ATS was supposed to have a Pontiac counterpart to scale-down cost. IMO Pontiac can continue as a 2-3 model niche at Buick dealers with a CT4 or/and CT5 counterpart, standard 2.0t with an available 2.7t, 5.3 and a fast CUV.
Apparently gas mileage hasn’t changed all that much. I have driven my buddies 2015 Mustang Ecoboost 6 speed automatic convertible numerous times and 17.5-19 MPG is the norm even with highway driving mixed in. His previous 2005 GT V8 was even worse often seeing 15-16. Where the new ones shine is pure highway driving where a V8 equipped Camaro can get as high as 30 on long stretches of interstate.
And while we have advanced a great deal in power, handling, braking and safety it has cost us. We are left with but 2 choices in this car class and one portly mid size heavy coupe in the form of the Challenger. You can have any interior color you like as long as it’s black and maybe maybe you will be lucky to find one with red accents and seats. Rear visibility has also greatly suffered and with the Camaro you truly feel like your in a bunker and it’s very claustrophobic to some. the other fly in today’s ointment is ordering flexibility. You can forget about ordering these new cars the way you want them. Often you are stuck with thousands of dollars in extra options just to get something simple like remote start or an XM radio. The last issue with today’s automotive landscape is many disappearing choices. Coupes, sticks, larger sedans and fun to drive sporty cars are becoming harder to find. Engine sizes are shrinking and so is cylinder count. Transmission gears and types keep going up with very mixed results. And during the 90’s and 00″s we at least had pontiac around to quench our performance car thirst. Very missed