Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Automotif DXLIII...


Like its crosstown arch rival from Dearborn, the fourth generation of the GM F-body Camaro/Firebird twins was actually more of a very heavy refresh of the previous generation than a clean sheet of paper reboot. If you park a '92 and a '93 next to each other and look at the line of the C-pillar and the hatchback, it really becomes obvious.

The new refresh had some very important upgrades, though, and the most important was a transmission tunnel capacious enough for a more modern manual transmission, namely the 6-speed Borg Warner T-56, which had originally been developed to live behind the brawny 488 cubic inch V-10 in the Dodge Viper.

This was important because the previous 3rd Gen cars were saddled with the Borg Warner T5 5-speed and that meant that the rowdiest motors could only be had with slushboxes, since the T-5 wasn't up to the torque of the 5.7L 'Vette motor.

For the Fourth Gen cars, though, the 305 V-8 was gone. You could get a base Firebird secretarymobile with a 3.4L V-6, or you could get a Formula or Trans Am with a hairy-chested LT1 350 V-8 Corvette motor.


1998 saw a mid-cycle styling refresh for the Firebird. The Trans Am got a more aggro-looking snout, vents on the front fenders, and now the motor choices were the GM corporate 3800 V-6 200hp for base Firebirds and the 5.7L LS1 'Vette motor for the Formula and Trans Am.

Packaged for the F-body, the LS1 was rated at 305 horsepower, or 320 if you checked the box for the WS6 package, with its functional cold air "Ram Air" intake.

Car & Driver tested a 1999 30th Anniversary WS6 Trans Am convertible and ripped off a 5.3 second zero-to-sixty and a 13.9 second at 104 mph quarter mile run on its way to a 163mph top speed. These would have been impressive supercar numbers just a decade earlier and the Fourth Gen F-bodies remain some of the most performance bang for the minimum wage buck on the used car market to this day.

This one was photographed in September of 2024 with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and Panasonic 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens.

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