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I was looking at this and it just amazes me how much this car sucks. look at the specs on it. http://carspecs.netfirms.com/cars/Epkyy ... YzBT.shtml

man i remember when those cars first came out....it wasnt a t/a but my dad went out and bought a new 82 camaro with a v6 in it..used to be you could get either the firebird or camaro with a 4 cylinder in it too. they were freakin cool in their day..

ewww wtf trans ams only have 160 hp? top speed of 107? my damn current v6 is faster than that!!!, excuse me, i have to go cry....

That doesn't seem right for a V8, but I'm no car expert by any means. My bike has about 95 hp and it only weighs 370 lbs :)

ya its very pathetic, they should of taken the guys who designed those and shot them. there should be no V8 "sports" car that goes that slow and with that little of power.

You have to remember that this was the 80s, right after huge gas prices and a few misconceptions about how to achieve fuel economy that also hindered performance in the process. Compression was low, camshafts were small, carburetors were small and tuned for gas mileage instead of performance, exhaust manifolds and mufflers were like corks, the overall combo wasn't that impressive because the design emphasis wasn't for power. The other hindering factor was that it had a 305 in it, which is IMO the crappiest V8 GM ever put into a vehicle and serves better as a boat anchor than powering a performance car. 289s will walk all over a 305, for a small V8 they were a high revving monster, especially with a little modification. Even stock their HP was in the 200s and torque was in the 300 lb ft range. Eventually designers began to focus on creating power, and in the process realized that making an engine more efficient (making more power off of the same amount of fuel, via optimizing airflow into and out of the engine and optimizing cylinder head design) increased gas mileage in the process, thus you began seeing cars with higher compression, more aggressive camshaft profiles (especially when roller cams came out), lower gear ratios and such.

not to mention things like catalytic converters were still fairly new and being developed and were highly inefficient, robbing huge amounts of what little power there was due to the drop in compression with unleaded gas and emmissions crackdowns.
Performance just wasn't the major goal, since nobody wanted to spend money on fast cars then.. it was more about looks and being able to afford the car at all. Look at the 1975 firebird if you want to see pathetic performance specs. quarter was around 18 or 20 seconds, with about 140hp at the wheels with the big 6.6L V8.
yeah I remember the old Iron Duke 4cyl engines in the early 80s firebirds.. talk about poor performance there.. that's the look I have a sportscar with a hamster under the hood mentality. girls' cars. They only offered that motor for a couple of years before scrapping it completely.

Remember engine design has come a long way in over 20 years of development time, and not a lot has changed in fuel octanes, compressions, and emmissions regs over that time. that shift hit around 1974 and it took everyone a while to catch up.
Look at the 80s Ferrari like Magnum PI drove.. that thing (308) had the performance of a 6cyl modern day mustang.. at best.. but it costs over $60K at the time and people all thought it was a badass car.

It's just getting back to the way it used to be, just with better gas mileage. Now if they can just make the cars worth a crap :)

just imagine the power we'd have with good old 108 octane leaded fuel with today's motors.. heh
14:1 compression ozone be damned

My truck + leaded 108 octane = Me on a bunch of environmentalists hitlist :)