ADMIN Note (A/N): Ah, Hector. What a car he was for us, and remains as such to this day.
A real survivor; he survived a rough and tough existence as a daily driver in DFW for over 10 years. We have some great memories of that special ride. Everybody we came in contact with either loved it… or they hated it.
The original posting and remembrances from back in 1998 are in quotation marks and standard text below; my current remarks (from 2026) are in bold face italics. Right off, let’s answer the most oft-asked question first:
WHY DID WE CALL THE CAR “Hector”? Well, when we bought the car the console storage box had a crusty old Texas registration in it for a “HECTOR GONZALEZ” who resided in Irving, TX… and, thanks to my wife Jami, the name just sorta stuck.
Literally. The slip was stuck to the side of the console box. Eeww.
So, “Mr. Hector Gonzalez” it was. We won’t talk about the roach clips, seeds, and other marijuana paraphernalia we found in the console under the shift plate. No no no no.
“The chance to actually own one of these unique GTAs was something that I never expected to be fortunate enough to actually get, but fate sometimes has a way of dealing you some excellent hands. I had never even seen one of these rare GTAs outside of magazine pictures… to get the chance to own one was, quite frankly, very thrilling.”
“Our black GTA Notchback was built during the second week of January, 1988 at the plant in Van Nuys and was shipped out on April 14 to the selling GM dealership, David McDavid Pontiac in Irving, TX. I have not been able to locate the build sheet for this car either, but I do have all the PHS paperwork on it that shows the invoice, pricing, and shipping dates. The retail sticker price of the car was $20,488, including options, destination charges, and other dealer charges.”
Specifications:
Engine: B2L 5.7L TPI V8 – UPC B2L
Transmission: 700-R4 Overdrive Four-Speed Automatic – UPC MX0
Suspension: Level III – UPC WS6
Wheels: 16 x 8 Gold Diamond-Spoke Aluminum – UPC PW7
Tires: 245/50-VR16 Firestone Firehawk SV and Goodyear Eagle GT+4 (while in our possession)
Exterior Color: Black – UPC 41U, WA 8555
Interior Color: Medium Dark Grey Custom Cloth – UPC 82D
Options: All UPC Y84 GTA standard equipment, plus GTA Notchback decklid – UPC AA8
A/N: We owned this car from August 7, 1998 until Labor Day weekend of 2015. The story of its discovery is rather unique, so I’ll share it with you…
“A fluke stop at a Qwik-Mart 50 miles from home netted a copy of the local Auto Trader magazine… remember those pre-Internet days? … where I found this car pictured on the back page in an ad for KMK’s Used Camaros and Firebirds on Loop 380 in Arlington, TX; it was listed as a GTA HATCHBACK. I could tell right away from the photo that something wasn’t right with that description. You couldn’t really see the glass hatch on the rear end. A phone call to the seller revealed that it was not a hatchback, but was actually a Notchback. After I discovered that they indeed still did have the car, I asked the seller why the car hadn’t been sold and he said… “well, lots of people have looked at it, but they don’t think it’s right. Nobody’s around here’s ever seen a GTA that looks like this one”. Hmmm. So I figured I might be onto something.
I asked him if he would care to check for the SPI label and told him it was in the car’s console box. He did so and assured me the label was right there in plain view. I then asked him to check for the AA8 code on the list and he left for a second, came back to the phone, and said, “yep, it’s the third one on the list….”. Talk about the hair on your neck standing up!! I asked him if the car was good enough to repair and drive; I wasn’t going to make a six-hundred-mile trip to look at a “rattletrap”, regardless of its rarity. I was a bit uneasy when they told me that the car had “some cowl damage” but he still said it was really nice. I guess curiosity got the best of me. He assured me that the car was super clean, and we set off to Dallas three days later.”
A/N: When we arrived, I was stunned to find the car only had some NOSE damage, not cowl damage at all… and that KMK’s would throw in all the parts to repair the car as part of the deal: a fender, a headlamp, and the nose panel!
“Upon arrival, it quickly became obvious to both my wife and I that this car wasn’t going anywhere… except back to Arkansas with us.
A/N: My wife told me she only cared about one thing: she said “it better not have that “horrible” tan interior” because if it did, we weren’t buying it! She rushed over to the car, jerked open the door and shouted “it’s GREY like the red car!” Jackpot, baby!
I quickly negotiated the guy down to $2500 and set off to find a suitable trailer to pull our newly found “bounty”.
A/N: You have no idea how hard it was to find a trailer at 4:30 PM on a Friday in Arlington, TX! So hard in fact that I, in the throes of my excitement… or ignorance, you decide… declared that I would just drive the car back to Arkansas myself. Luckily my wife’s much saner head won that argument and we found a U-Haul store at about 4:50 that had a trailer to rent…
After finding a U-Haul still open in nearby Grand Prairie and renting a car trailer, we returned to KMK’s and loaded the car up. We took off straightaway towards home, not believing our good fortune. The car had some minor body damage to the extreme front end (nose cap, RH headlamp, etc.), but was entirely operable and functioning…. even the A/C was still fully charged. The seller told me that three times in the previous month, he had resisted the urge to allow the car to be parted out….. sensing that “something good was going to happen to it”. The trip back home was uneventful, save for many stops to make sure the “cargo” was well secured.
After some panel replacement and minor repairs to the front end, he was ready to go. During the first “official” trip to my local Pontiac dealer for servicing and to remove the GM alarm system that wouldn’t stopping screaming, we discovered that the car’s ignition had been tampered with and the wiring was all hacked up; later I learned the car had been stolen, and then crashed at some point after that.
That allowed for the Texas salvaged title that the car had when we got it, despite the very minor damage. A quick call to the insurance company involved (and some fast talking on my part explaining that the car was collectible) got me the real facts on the incident, and I was able to rest a lot easier after hearing the story. To them, it was just a nine-year old car that got stolen and ended up in a ditch. The insurance simply issued a check for the loss, and that was that.
Our car has 114,600 original miles on it right now and has only been in the repair shop twice since we’ve had it… once for an A/C retrofit to R134A, and then an unscheduled stop for a new radiator during last summer’s National Third Gen Gathering in Norman, OK. (This event was in the summer of 1999.)
Other than that… nothing, which I feel is fortunate since we don’t know a lot about the car’s maintenance history. My Pontiac dealer has said, though, that it appears that the car was regularly serviced and/or repaired by a GM dealership because of GM service replacement parts seen under the hood…which lets me breather a little easier.”
“We have repaired a few things on the car over the past couple of years; the headliner was redone last summer, we replaced a dirty sunvisor, etc… you know, the usual twelve-year-old worn out items. We also had the car painted prior to the Trans Am Nationals last August. The R134A and condenser repair caused me to have to forego the basecoat/clearcoat paint in favor of a single-stage paint system, but the car still looks really great.”
A/N: That 1999 trip to Dayton was memorable for more than one reason. It was the first time we ever took a car to Dayton to be a part of the Nationals and despite being so glad to finally have a car there… well, let’s just say the bad vibes started “bubbling up” pretty early. As we were sitting in the OEM stock judging class line waiting to have the car assigned to a class, a judge walks up to the car and unprompted says “you’re gonna have to go in the Light Modified class with that rear end, that’s not factory”. I told him that it indeed was a factory option, and proceeded to pull out the window sticker in an attempt to show him where the AA8 option was listed right on the sticker.
This “judge” wasn’t having any of it, and the discussion proceeded to get a bit “heated”, with neither of us changing our point of view whatsoever. About that time another fellow came by to see what the fuss was about, as we were starting to draw several people over to where we were standing. Seeing what was going on and taking note of the window sticker in my hand, this new guy told this fellow “look, now they did make some of those things like that. Not a lot, but they did make ’em. I’ve heard of them, and seen them here before…”
Man, this guy arguing with me bowed up, and I mean like in an instant he snatched the sticker out of my hand, glanced at it, and turned away. The second judge was like “hey, I’m really sorry about this”. The situation was starting to calm a bit when the first judge brusquely turned back around and thrust the window sticker back into my hand and stomped away. Hey, problem solved, right? Um, err, well…
I got back in the car, and we continued to move up through the classing line for the next 15 or so minutes. Lo and behold, guess who we got when it was our turn? That’s right: ‘ol Mr. Sourpuss. He snatched our class card away and started walking around the car with his cap pulled down as far as he could get it. After about 4 revolutions around, he handed me the card back, told me to “move along”, and we got the news: “1982-1992 – Light Modified”.
Wait, what??!!??
I told the guy I thought we had worked through the misunderstanding about the decklid, and he switched gears on me instead: “You’re gonna need to address those valve stems if you want to be in the stock class. Those aren’t the stock valve stems… if you want to go somewhere and change those valve stems out, then I’ll LET (emphasis added) you be in the stock 1982-92 class”. Man, did I EVER want to “address something, all right”, but on the “advice” of my much-more-levelheaded wife (below) I just kept my mouth shut and “took it up the tailpipe” a’la Jim Carrey in “LIAR, LIAR”. She’s keeping watch over Hector (at the lower left) in the photo from the show field.
So, off we went in the “1982-1992, Light Modified” class… and proceeded to be amazed at all the NON-STOCK accessories that were allowed into the 1982-1992 Stock class that year. Some judges let anything through. So that’s why you see Hector parked next to a 1984 Trans Am in the photo from ’99 below.
But I never did address those valve stems… I’ve still got ’em.
“Mechanically, the car is still in its OEM stock, 225-hp configuration; being that my wife drives it most of the time, it’s likely that it will remain that way for some time. In time I hope to add some things, like the strut tower brace, and maybe some of the same TPI system work that my red GTA has undergone. But for now it’s all right just like it sits… I’ll trade a little bit of performance for the rare privilege of owning an authentic Notchback GTA.
We enjoy taking it around to various shows and meets; it always garners a lot of attention, since most people have never seen one in person; they are always curious to look at it and see how the decklid works… Some even are, I feel, a bit disappointed when they learn that underneath the cars are the same… that the Notchback was just a fancy little “gadget” that Pontiac used to change the car’s lines up a little bit. So far we have won trophies in two of the car’s three outings: a pair of Second Place trophies, which just gives us something to work harder for in the future.”
“Our Notchback GTA is one of the 718 Notchback GTAs built in 1988 (6.5% of production); in addition, 3,223 GTAs were equipped with the Medium Dark Gray custom cloth interior (29% of production), like this car has. A total of 7,779 GTAs left Van Nuys with the 5.7L TPI V8; this represents some 69% of the total GTA production in 1988.”
“So this is HECTOR; I hope you enjoyed this feature on our own little part of GTA history….. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to let me hear from you.”
A/N: Hector did end up winning a Bronze third-place award at the 2013 Pontiac Southern Nationals in Richardson, TX held on September 7 and 8, 2013. This was the last major event he attended while we owned him. It ended with us getting the award pictured below, but also contributed one last really cool story to his legacy with us, so I’ll tell it here below the images:
Now…when I realized I was going back to the DFW area with Hector for the first time in about 5 years, I began to try and form a plan to resolve a simple situation that had bugged me for many years: Hector had never had a proper dealership owner’s manual sleeve, except for those big ugly envelopes stamped CAR PAPERS, and he was much too cool for that. When we bought the car, it didn’t even have an owner’s manual!
I knew from Hector’s PHS packet that the original selling dealer was David McDavid Pontiac/GMC in Irving, TX, so I decided to see if I could just phone the Pontiac store and order a sleeve for the owner’s manual from their dealership, since they had originally sold the car. Easy peasy. Sounds simple, right?
I first called two weeks before the PSN show in September 2013 and tried to get the “negotiations” rolling. Ever called a GM dealership back in the day? Ever got anyone who could help you on your first call? So you know how this call went, then. Got to speak with everyone in the dealership I think: service, parts, finance, you name it.
And not a soul who knew what I was talking about.
So I decided to retreat, regroup, and try again. I then called the dealership again a week before leaving for DFW. This time I got a different operator who said she knew exactly what I was referring to, and quickly transferred me to the PARTS DEPARTMENT. AARRGGHH!?!?! So I asked the parts guy to transfer me back to the switchboard; again, the same cheery voice asked me who I needed to speak with? Having tried every single department in the building over two weeks, I just asked her to connect me with a salesperson. How bad could that be?
So after a couple three minutes of Musak, a voice comes on the line… “this is James (Roberts… or maybe Roberson) how can I help you?” I know the James part is right and I’m almost positive on the last name all these years later, but I didn’t take notes of the call. I went about trying to explain to him what I was looking for, and he keyed right in on what I was after. “We call those ‘owners folios’. You’re talking about what the owners manual and paperwork goes in, right?” he asked. Voila! Yabba-dabba-doo!
He asked me why I wanted an owner folio, and I told him that I had a car that had been originally been sold there at David McDavid, and I didn’t have anything to put the owners manual into. He them asked me what kind of car I had and I told him a 1988 Trans Am GTA, to which he replied “oh, yeah, man, we sold a bunch of those things back in the day… they would really fly with that big 350 engine…”. I told him that “both of mine had the 350 TPI too, but I told him that this one car was a little bit different… it is what was called a GTA Notchback”.
And the phone line just went dead. Like crickets for about 10-20 seconds.
“Is that car black, by chance?” he asked. I told him that, indeed, it was black and there was this big exhale of air over the phone. “I remember the day that car was delivered”, James said. “The driver made a mistake and we were the first stop on that delivery but with only that one car, and they had to unload the entire truck for that GTA which was loaded out over the cab of the truck. I’d been here about 5 months at the time and was working in vehicle prep. I thought that was the ugliest thing I had ever seen from the back”, he laughed.
I told him that there had only been a little over 700 built out of over 11,000 GTAs in that one year they were made, and he replied “so, what you’re telling me now is that it wasn’t so ugly after all?” and we both laughed. No, not so much after all. He told me they only got the one Notchback new that he remembered, but they had one come through the used car department once, a red GTA. He offered to mail me the folio, but when I told him I was coming to DFW the next week I told him I’d be in the Monday after the PSN show. He was interested to see the car again after such a long time, and we made plans there to meet the Monday after the show.
After the show weekend, Monday morning September 9 I headed to the dealership to pick up the owner folio. Went up and asked for James by name, only to learn he’d traded days with another salesman because of a family emergency involving the other salesman’s daughter. However, he’d left word with the receptionist to “get some pictures of that black GTA if it comes by”. When the staff all learned that the car was originally sold there, EVERYONE poured outside to see it even though the dealership was by then David McDavid Honda instead of a GM store. Lots of talking, looking, taking oodles of photos, and just a really great experience. Really enjoyed it, and enjoyed talking with everybody that had memories from back in the day of Trans Ams and Firebirds.
More additional photos of Mr. Gonzalez throughout the years of ownership:
We would own Hector for 2 more years after that PSN show, but changes were on the horizon. My daughter Erin was approaching driving age, and she would need to be able to put her car somewhere when she got one. There was never any real choice between the two GTAs as to which one would be offered for sale, so the decision to pass Hector on to new owners was made in the spring of 2015.
Luckily for us… and the car, the succession plan had been established a few years before. My good friend Joe Krizan had expressed interest in purchasing Hector if we ever decided to sell the car, and so the deal was struck in August of 2015. Which meant a lot of “lasts” were in the immediate future…
Joe and his then-wife Stacy traveled to Arkansas over Labor Day weekend in September of 2015 to complete the purchase on September 6 and take Hector G to his new home in Amarillo, TX.
I have to tell you that it was a real privilege and thrill to own this car for the 17 years we had it, and I always loved the way it wowed people on every show field we took it across… it was like watching a rock star work his way through a crowd; you could literally follow the ripples going through.
The fellow at KMK’s was definitely right… something good happened to it. I am thankful we were the ones who kept Hector from seeing a salvage yard, and gave him many more sights to see in the ensuing years. The Krizans continued to work with this car, and it was a pleasure seeing them improve Mr. G even more.
We transferred ownership of Hector G to Stacy and Joe on September 6, 2015, and their stewardship lasted almost 9 years; the car’s current owner is Jeff Frink of Colorado Springs, CO. Jeff purchased the car from the Krizans in June of 2024.