[Cruiser]

Both my dad and I love "Traditional Pontiacs"we both own and race 455 T/As.(Dad 10.30@128 my street T/A 11.7@117 ) I have been to many Pontiac events.I have noticed a divide between what many consider "True Pontiacs" and pontiacs with other "corporate engine packages "in the engine compartment.I have a little story that some of you may find interesting.
Back in 88or 89 my Dad and I attended The Trans Am Nationals in Dayton,we brought our Trans Ams to the Nationals.Pontiac also had a display with several new models and concept vehicles as well as the New 89 Turbo Pace Car.At this time my dad was interested in purchasing a 89 TurboPace(not to be confused with the 80 Turbo Pace car).
We struck up a conversation with a very nice gentleman at the Pontiac display and we offered to by him lunch,and continue our conversation about Pontiacs.He told us about his various experiences with Pontiac through the years.He told us about his fastest combination a 440 early 70s firebird that he said was unstoppable.He also told us about how they would race(OR TEST) their Pontiacs against the Mopar boys on Woodward Ave.(he said that they would run a course that had a bunch of stop lights so their wild cammed 2x4barrel 426 hemis would load up the carbs and get nice and hot before they would actually TEST them "
Then he started talking about his last development project with Pontiac,the 89 Turbo T/A.Pace Car
Most people think that these T/As merely had Buick G.N. Turbos bolted in however he said this was not true.
The 89 Turbo shared only the basic shortblock with the Buick Turbo G.N.Due to a narrower engine compartment the heads from the G.N. would not fit.The Pontiac Engineers found out that if they bolted the heads fron a 3800 Bonneville it would not only fit but made more horsepower.They also used a larger Turbo and got rid of the top end limiting chip.This car could easily pace the Indy 500 at over 150 MPH without any modifications.It was easily capable of 13.00 E.T.s. He said that he " street raced" excuse me "drove" the "Test Mule"version on the street for "development purposes".However it was stolen from his driveway and never recovered.He said that this was a true Pontiac developed engine package.
Now to quote the famousPaul Harvey "for the rest of the story" .The man who shared his Pontiac history with us that day was none other than Milt Schornack of "Royal Pontiac" fame a true pontiac legend.

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[Cruiser]

Both my dad and I love "Traditional Pontiacs"we both own and race 455 T/As.(Dad 10.30@128 my street T/A 11.7@117 ) I have been to many Pontiac events.I have noticed a divide between what many consider "True Pontiacs" and pontiacs with other "corporate engine packages "in the engine compartment.I have a little story that some of you may find interesting.
Back in 88or 89 my Dad and I attended The Trans Am Nationals in Dayton,we brought our Trans Ams to the Nationals.Pontiac also had a display with several new models and concept vehicles as well as the New 89 Turbo Pace Car.At this time my dad was interested in purchasing a 89 TurboPace(not to be confused with the 80 Turbo Pace car).
We struck up a conversation with a very nice gentleman at the Pontiac display and we offered to by him lunch,and continue our conversation about Pontiacs.He told us about his various experiences with Pontiac through the years.He told us about his fastest combination a 440 early 70s firebird that he said was unstoppable.He also told us about how they would race(OR TEST) their Pontiacs against the Mopar boys on Woodward Ave.(he said that they would run a course that had a bunch of stop lights so their wild cammed 2x4barrel 426 hemis would load up the carbs and get nice and hot before they would actually TEST them "
Then he started talking about his last development project with Pontiac,the 89 Turbo T/A.Pace Car
Most people think that these T/As merely had Buick G.N. Turbos bolted in however he said this was not true.
The 89 Turbo shared only the basic shortblock with the Buick Turbo G.N.Due to a narrower engine compartment the heads from the G.N. would not fit.The Pontiac Engineers found out that if they bolted the heads fron a 3800 Bonneville it would not only fit but made more horsepower.They also used a larger Turbo and got rid of the top end limiting chip.This car could easily pace the Indy 500 at over 150 MPH without any modifications.It was easily capable of 13.00 E.T.s. He said that he " street raced" excuse me "drove" the "Test Mule"version on the street for "development purposes".However it was stolen from his driveway and never recovered.He said that this was a true Pontiac developed engine package.
Now to quote the famousPaul Harvey "for the rest of the story" .The man who shared his Pontiac history with us that day was none other than Milt Schornack of "Royal Pontiac" fame a true pontiac legend.

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[Doug]

Cruiser, see my recent post on "fastest Pontiac" in Lobby. It refers to a heads up test of an 89 Turbo GTA vs a 65 GTO in the December 89 issue of High Performance POntiac. In that article it lists some of the extra goodies that the Pontiac version had above the Buick version. They said that a Pontiac version at 250 horse, 340 ft lbs was severely underated. They said a stock GN dynoed @ 180 rear wheel horses, a GNX showed 200 and the turbo GTA showed 220 rear wheel horses. The best test run was 13.74@101.8. They had another test of a tweaked version
( different chip, 160 thermostat, K&N filter, firmer shocks, octane booster) they ran 13.22@105.38.

They anticipated that with some other mods they would get it into the 12.70 range.

I went to a Buick event at Bristol this year and I was really impressed by how well those cars ran. The had some GTA cars running too but they didn't come up to the Buick numbers.
Some of the street driven Buicks were running in mid 11's. Deceptive little monsters. Like I said in my post in the Lobby several weeks ago about this Buick show, I told everybody that if you run upon one of those Buicks and his exhaust pipe comes out in front of the front wheel, you better try to sneak away before he sees you.
( Then again: There is no substitute for cubic inches! Maybe??? Later, Doug