Trans Am?

[Vallåkra]

Hi,

I'm currently arguing with my brother-in-law (sic) about the model name "Trans Am". I have claimed that several makes, not just Pontiac, have used Trans Am, or at least T/A, on some of there models.
Dodge Challenger T/A, for instance. Can anyone sort this out for me?

[MrPbody]

I've seen both, but can't recall any others. The Dodge was not a "Trans Am". It was a "Challenger T/A", as you already stated. There were the Boss 302, Z/28, AAR 'Cuda, and Javelin SST. I know of no other cars that were specifically aimed at T/A racing.

[MagicRat]

The term 'Trans Am' was owned by the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), which was the sanctioning body for the Trans Am racing serices in the late 60's and early 70's.

One for the rules was that a manufacturer had to sell a minimum of 1000(?) street legal versions of their race cars (5 L max displacement) to the public in order to qualify to race.

Pontiac bought the exclusive rights to use the Trans Am name from the SCCA, and paid the SCCA $5 royalty fee for every Trans Am car they sold. This arrangement, as we know, lasted long after the factory participation in the Trans Am racing series was cancelled.

However, since Pontiac had rights to the name, other manufactureres came as close as possible, by using T/A designations, etc.

[Autofreefindersguy]

Interesting also was that Pontiac didn't have a Trans Am that was a 5.0 displacement or under at the time...

[MrPbody]

The car was to be qualified, and the production number was 500, according to SCCA. Pontiac paid $50 per vehicle, according to Jim Wangers.
None of the Chrysler or Pontiac versions had 5.0 engines for the street car. The engine size was a competition requirement, but not a sales requirement. Dodge had a 305 T/A engine and Pontiac had that 303. Both of these are RACE items, available if you had a friend in the right place, and were actually racing a T/A car.
This (the engine part) is from memory There is precious little documentation on the projects.