One topic that has not faded over the years is the constant desire of Trans Am GTA owners and enthusiasts to know what options that individual RPO/UPC codes represent on their cars. These codes are the most important way to document and verify your GTA, and as we get continually younger enthusiasts involved in our hobby who want to know this information… this one request is by far an overwhelming favorite. The main takeaway remains that we are still continuing to draw new enthusiasts to the fold and that is a great thing in itself; these cars are 30-odd years old now at their youngest and the younger set continues to be interested in them. How incredibly cool is that?
The Service Product Information (SPI) label that contains the RPO/UPC codes had (and still has) a very valid reason for being used: the label was a list of options a particular car was built with in order to ensure that the correct repair parts were used by the dealership when a car was serviced or repaired. So the label was originally service-oriented in nature. That was how it remained until the late 1990s when the model research was begun for The Source Page. It didn’t take a genius to see where this new information was headed across the Inter-webs. Very quickly it became apparent that low numbers of UPC option installations could make cars very rare in nature, especially in the later years where GTA production was much lower.
What compounds the rarity issue is that GM/Pontiac did not track any combinations of UPC option usage, only individual UPC installations on a car. So where it is easy to decipher, for instance, how many 1989 GTAs were built with the UPC B2L 5.7L V8 engine, their method of calculation makes it virtually impossible to ascertain how many 5.7L cars had the UPC CC1 hatch roofs and the UPC U1A AM/FM/CD stereo, for instance, or the UPC 82D Medium Gray Cloth interior. Naturally, you can see the snafu this would cause when trying to figure out the rarity of a particular car. The only way that seems conducive to accomplishing this level of code breakdown would be to have each and every invoice of every GTA built in a particular model year to sort, compile, and then compare. A monumental task, to say the least.
But these sections were pulled from GM’s own confidential usage printouts and cover each year 1987-1992. The 1987 totals are for the combination of FW87 Trans Am models, and the Y84 Trans Am GTA models; the totals were not separated as in later years. The 1987 section also covers cars sold in the United States and for export but does not include cars sold in Canada (UPC Z49), whereas the 1988-1992 sections cover Trans Am GTA models sold throughout the world.
