Now in the sixth year of its current body style, the top-of-the-line Pontiac Trans Am GTA is the crème de la crème of Pontiac’s musclecar heritage. This all-American GT delivers Pontiac excitement in monochromatic tones that make it a strong candidate for America’s most beautifully styled performance car. GM designers left off all the gingerbread and allowed the car’s profile to speak for itself.
The GTA carries all Firebird interior options as standard equipment, and it’s a suitably plush environment for serious performance car operators. New fully articulating bucket seats are comfortable and supportive with a full range of adjustments via pneumatic back wing and lumbar bolsters, and headrests that can actually be positioned to support your head. Analog instrumentation in a simple, but functional dash layout keeps you well informed, and the leather wrapped steering wheel delivers outstanding road feel so there’s never any doubt about what the car is doing.
Under the hood, the GTA is plenty serious looking with its 350-cubic-inch Tuned Port small block. Electronic fuel injection, electronic engine management, and roller valve lifters make it look and sound formidable, but the basic short block is a carryover from the Seventies. The addition of space age electronic controls has broadened its capabilities, but restrictive inlet and exhaust systems still hamper its performance. Sporting a near perfect match between engine, torque converter, and axle ratio, the GTA launches very hard and is extremely quick through low gear, but once the engine starts to rev, it gives up because it simply can’t breathe. Fortunately, there are simple and legal remedies to this persistent problem, but in a car with the GTA’s credentials this problem shouldn’t exist.
In spite of being down on power, the GTA really delivers when the straight road ends. Pontiac’s WS6 performance suspension calibration is standard equipment on the GTA and is right on target for max-g corner burning. Heavy-duty springs and gas-filled shocks are complemented by a 36 mm front stabilizer bar and a 24 mm rear bar. With four-wheel disc brakes and close-ratio power-assisted steering you can go ballistic with this baby and never bat an eye. The power-assisted four-wheel discs pull the car down from 60 mph in less than 150 feet on a cold stop, but as we have found with other GM F-bodies, they lack repeatability because the total swept area is not sufficient to support continuous hard braking.
As with any performance car, we could nit-pick the GTA on a variety of points, but its overall performance is very satisfying. As long as you avoid the temptation to compare early and late musclecars strictly on the basis of acceleration, the GTA scores high marks in every category. It has good hot rod potential because there are obvious flaws, such as the inlet and exhaust systems, that beg for improvement. In any case, the ’87 Pontiac Trans Am GTA is one sweet ride.
While not as stylish as the GTA, the Nissan 300ZX Turbo is, nevertheless, a handsome devil. Nissan designers gave the car a cleaner, more aerodynamic nose treatment that delivers a suprisingly sleek 0.30 drag coefficient. Body-colored front and rear fasciae enhance the new look, and a full-width rear spoiler and stop-lamp assembly improves the back of the car. The car looks most formidable from the front even with the half-hidden retractable headlamps winking at you. The most deceptive view is a side profile where an angular break at the B-pillar spoils the car’s otherwise clean lines. With the 16-inch aluminum wheels color anodized in charcoal, our test car was as subtle as its bright red finish would allow.
Enter the cockpit, and you settle into one of the most comfortable seats available. It features full seat bolsters for lateral support and hidden, but easy to reach, power controls. An electric pump fills individual air bladders to match your shape with personalized control of the lower back and thigh supports. Interior design is clean and functional, with frequently used controls for the AM/FM/cassette deck and cruise control located in the center of the steering wheel. The interior is highlighted by a butter-slick manual shifter that compliments an equally smooth clutch arrangement.
Pop the hood and you’re looking at 3 liters (181-cid) of high-tech Nissan turbo V6 power. An extremely efficient powerplant, the turbocharged V6 nearly matches the output of the V8-powered GTA with only half its displacement. It doesn’t make torque like the V8, but it sure comes on when you spin it up tight. At 1.1 hp per cubic inch and 1.25 lb.-ft per cubic inch, the engine is a strong performer that also delivers the extremely smooth, “hardly know it’s running” idle that is characteristic of many Japanese-built cars.
With nearly 350 pounds less weight to haul around, it’s surprising that the 300ZX is only marginally more fuel efficient than the V8-powered GTA, but then a huge reserve of torque to overcome inertia when starting off can do wonders for your fuel economy. The 3.0L V6 will never become fashionable as a hot rod engine, but it looks right at home in the 300 ZX. If you’re given to trick-looking powerplants, this engine is appealing even when cluttered with plumbing.
The most difficult point to understand about the 300ZX is its handling characteristics. While equipped with all the right hardware, it is still incapable of registering 0.80g or better on the skidpad. Under transient conditions it responds better than the numbers indicate and it’s clear that the Bridgestones are working well. The car can be driven very hard while remaining predictable, yet in day-to-day traffic it has an annoying tendency to wander. Constant steering input is required to keep pit between the white lines, and the car is more than willing to follow minor imperfections in the road surface. The combination of narrow track width, short wheelbase, and low effort, quick steering that exaggerates corrections adds up to a driving experience that calls for constant attention. Ride quality is exceptional with the suspension calibration set on soft, and the switch to firm delivers a very noticeable increase in stiffness.
The 300ZX Turbo is extremely capable as performance cars go, but it’s clear that it could deliver much more if Nissan were to incorporate suspension and steering revisions. No one who buys a 300ZX will be disappointed, though we suspect that few owners will ever hot rod their 300ZXs to any great degree. However, there is certainly plenty of room for the hot rodder’s unique brand of personal engineering. By way of comparison, the 300Zx Turbo finishes a close second to the Pontiac Trans Am GTA. The GTA outruns it, outbrakes it, and outstyles it for considerably less money, and that’s the bottom line.
—John Baechtel
SPEC SHEET
Models: 1987 Pontiac Trans Am GTA, 1987 Nissan 300 ZX Turbo
RETAIL:
Base Price: $13,259 (GTA), $22,029 (300ZX)
Price As Tested: $18,473 (GTA), $25,199 (300ZX)
ENGINE:
Type: OHV - V8 (GTA), OHV - V6 (300ZX)
Bore & Stroke: 4.00 x 3.48 inch (GTA), 3.43 x 3.27 inch (300ZX)
Displacement: 350 cid, 5.7L (GTA), 181 cid, 3.0L (300ZX)
Compression Ratio: 9.3:1 (GTA), 7.8:1 (300ZX)
HP, SAE Net @ rpm: 210 @ 4400 (GTA), 200 @ 5200 (300ZX)
Torque, SAE Net @ rpm: 320 @ 2800 (GTA), 227 @ 3600 (300ZX)
Induction System: Tuned Port EFI (GTA), L-Jetronic MPI Turbocharged (300ZX)
DRIVETRAIN:
Transmission: 4-speed AOD (GTA), 5-speed manual (300ZX)
Axle Ratio: 3.27:1 (GTA), 3.70:1 (300ZX)
CHASSIS:
Front Suspension: Independent MacPherson Struts, coil springs with 1.4-inch stabilizer bar (GTA), Independent MacPherson Struts, adjustable shocks, coil springs, anti-roll bar (300ZX)
Rear Suspension: Salisbury axle with torque arm, lower control arms, coil springs, and track bar (GTA), Independent semi-trailing arm coil spring, adjustable shocks, anti-roll bar (300ZX)
Steering: 14:1 recirculating ball, power assisted (GTA), 15.3:1 rack-and-pinion, power assisted (300ZX)
Brakes: Front: 10.5-inch discs, Rear: 10.5-inch discs (GTA), Front: 11.2-inch discs, Rear: 11.1-inch discs (300ZX)
Wheels: 16 x 8 styled aluminum (GTA), 16 x 7 cast alloy (300ZX)
Tires: P245/50VR16 Goodyear Eagles (GTA), P255/50VR16 Bridgestone Potenzas (300ZX)
GENERAL
Curb Weight: 3621 pounds (GTA), 3287 pounds (300ZX)
Wheelbase: 101 inches (GTA), 91.3 inches (300ZX)
Fuel Capacity: 15.5 gallons (GTA), 19 gallons (300ZX)
PERFORMANCE
Power-to-weight: 17.24 lbs./hp (GTA), 16.44 lbs./hp (300ZX)
0 to 60 mph: 6.8 seconds (GTA), 7.8 seconds (300ZX)
Quarter-Mile: 15.10 @ 92 mph (GTA), 15.85 @ 88 mph (300ZX)
Skidpad: 0.85g (GTA), 0.79g (300ZX)
