Pontiac Built a Better-Handling Trans Am Than the Camaro IROC-Z in 1987 – Then Watched Chevy Win the War Anyway

The 1987 Trans Am GTA debuted with gold wheels, Gran Turismo Americano badging, and a stock suspension setup few Camaro buyers could match. See how Pontiac’s underdog actually stacks up against the IROC-Z.

Pontiac had every reason to let the Trans Am GTA quietly lose. By 1987, the Camaro IROC-Z was the car teenagers begged their parents for, the one plastered across magazine covers and Firebird dealers’ worst nightmares. So Pontiac did something that looked, on paper, like it was setting its new flagship up to fail: it loaded the car with a suspension package most buyers never even checked a box for, aimed squarely at corners instead of stoplight drag races. The gamble didn’t save the GTA from losing the sales war. It just made the losing car the better one to actually drive — and more than three decades later, that’s the version collectors are hunting down.

A Brand-New Nameplate Built to Punch Above Its Weight

The Trans Am GTA wasn’t an old name getting a facelift in 1987 — it was brand new. Pontiac introduced the GTA that year as the top trim of the third-generation Firebird, borrowing a badge that stood for “Gran Turismo Americano” and leaning hard into the idea that this Trans Am was built to compete with European grand tourers, not just whatever Chevy had parked across the showroom floor. Gold-finish aluminum wheels set the GTA apart at a glance from the silver alloys on a standard Trans Am, and underneath, Pontiac backed up the European pretensions with hardware most domestic coupes of the era simply didn’t bother with.

That’s where the WS6 suspension package comes in. Pontiac had sold it since 1978 as an option for buyers who wanted sharper handling than the standard Firebird offered — stiffer springs, a heavier rear sway bar, quicker steering. For 1987, the company made a bolder move and built WS6 into the GTA as standard equipment. Every GTA buyer got 16-inch aluminum wheels, wider performance tires, and a chassis tuned for the apex of a turn rather than the green light of a drag strip, whether they specifically asked for it or not.

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The WS6 Package Chevy Didn’t Have an Answer For

Chevrolet never built an exact equivalent into the IROC-Z’s base configuration. The Camaro’s reputation was built on straight-line numbers and a name borrowed from a celebrity road-racing series, the International Race of Champions, not on cornering grip wrapped into the standard sticker price. Buyers who wanted a genuinely track-tuned Camaro in the 1980s had to look toward the IROC-Z’s own handling-oriented options, but nothing on the Chevy side carried the same blanket, no-asterisks standard-equipment status that WS6 had on the GTA.

Pontiac was betting that handling would matter to buyers who cared about more than a quarter-mile time slip — and it placed that bet on a car most of America was already choosing to ignore in favor of the Chevy. Sales numbers from the period still tilt toward the Camaro nameplate overall, but the GTA’s engineering decision wasn’t really aimed at winning that argument. It was aimed at making sure the car that lost the sales fight didn’t also lose the argument about which one was better built to drive.

A Half-Second That Started Decades of Arguments

On paper, the two cars were close enough to start fights that still haven’t ended. The GTA’s optional 5.7-liter V8 — a small-block sharing its basic architecture with the era’s Corvette engines, though detuned for the Firebird — made 210 horsepower and 315 lb-ft of torque, and Pontiac claimed a 0-60 mph run of about 6.5 seconds. That engine came paired exclusively to a four-speed automatic in 1987, with no manual gearbox offered behind it. The IROC-Z’s standard 305-cubic-inch Tuned Port Injection V8 was rated at 215 horsepower, with period road tests generally putting the car in the neighborhood of seven seconds to 60 mph. Chevy also offered a detuned version of the Corvette’s 350 L98 that year, good for 225 horsepower, though — just like the GTA’s big engine — it came automatic-only.

In other words, the Camaro had a slight horsepower edge, the Trans Am had a torque and claimed-acceleration edge, and neither company’s own numbers held up as gospel once outside testers got involved. The real separation wasn’t on a drag strip at all — it was in the corners, where the GTA’s standard suspension setup was doing a job the IROC-Z’s standard equipment simply wasn’t built to match.

What the Reviewer Found Decades Later

In the video, reviewer Joe Raiti walks through exactly this GTA in person, and the reactions underneath it tell their own story. Owners who bought these cars new in 1987 describe them not as a runner-up to the Camaro, but as the car they drove until the odometer rolled past 300,000 miles, the one they still measure every modern Camaro trim against. One commenter who owned a 1988 GTA with the WS6 package and a five-speed manual — a combination Pontiac didn’t offer alongside the bigger V8 — described the digital dash, the red backlit buttons, and T-tops as the real draw, horsepower numbers aside. Another, now an airline captain, credited watching this exact era of Firebird content with motivating him through years of hard work before buying his own modern Camaro as a reward.

That lines up with how the GTA actually sold itself in period advertising: not as a drag racer trying to out-muscle a Camaro, but as a driver’s car wrapped in distinctly 1980s technology — digital gauges, an aerodynamic nose, pop-up headlights, and a suspension setup that made backroads more interesting than straight-line bragging rights ever could.

Why the GTA Is the One Worth Chasing Now

Collector demand has a way of correcting old sales rankings, and this rivalry is a textbook case. The IROC-Z sold in bigger numbers and still commands plenty of nostalgia, but the GTA’s standard WS6 suspension means a stock, unmolested example drives sharper today than most showroom-spec IROC-Zs from the same model year — no aftermarket suspension work required to get there. For a buyer trying to decide between the two today, that’s the detail that actually matters: one of these cars came from the factory already set up to be thrown into a corner with confidence, and it wasn’t the one that won the sales chart in 1987.

Anyone shopping for a 1987 GTA today should still check the basics any 1980s Firebird demands — verify the 5.7-liter engine and WS6 badging actually match the build sheet rather than a dealer’s loose description, inspect the T-top seals for the leaks these cars are notorious for, and confirm the digital dash cluster still lights up fully, since replacement units are scarce. None of that changes the bigger picture: this is a car that was engineered to be good at driving first, not just good at looking fast in a showroom brochure.

None of this makes the IROC-Z a lesser car — it earned its reputation honestly, and plenty of owners wouldn’t trade theirs for anything with a Pontiac badge. But the GTA’s quieter engineering story is the one that rewards a closer look, and it’s exactly the kind of detail that gets lost when a rivalry gets remembered only by which car sold more copies.

The GTA badge didn’t last long by Firebird standards. It ran for six model years, from its 1987 debut through 1992, when the third-generation F-body platform itself was retired — and the final year was a scarce one, with only a few hundred GTAs built before the nameplate quietly disappeared. The Trans Am name carried on into the fourth-generation Firebird starting in 1993, but Pontiac never brought the GTA trim back. That makes every 1987 example — the car that started the whole argument with the IROC-Z — a snapshot of a very specific moment: the one year Pontiac decided a Trans Am needed to out-handle a Camaro more than it needed to out-sell one.

Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.