Pontiac Built the Fastest Car in America — GM Gave Them One Year
In 1987 Buick ended the Grand National program and left behind a turbocharged 3.8-liter V6 that had nowhere to go — so Pontiac engineer Bill Owen took it, paired it with the third-generation Firebird chassis that GM had standardized in 1982 to cut costs, and sent 1,555 white Trans Ams to a shop in California where Jeff Bietzel's team rebuilt the engine to produce 375 horsepower at the crank while GM put 250 on the window sticker to keep it below the Corvette's rating. Car and Driver tested it in 1989 and called the horsepower rating exceedingly modest — the car ran 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, covered the quarter mile in 13.4 seconds at 101 miles per hour, and paced the Indianapolis 500 without a single modification because it was the first pace car in the race's history fast enough to do the job completely stock. GM ran the program for one model year, never explained why it ended, and when Pontiac asked about continuing the answer was no — the same answer that had ended the Fiero, the GNX, and the Syclone before it.