Homebuilt Trans Am GTA Was a Gateway—and a Reality Check

Bitten by the muscle-car bug in high school, teenager Justin Hertel began drag-racing a 1970 Chevelle with his growing group of gearhead friends. “I was in the market for a car, and my buddies loved Mustangs and Rangers, so I wasn’t sure whether to go the truck or the car route. Once I saw a Chevelle, that sparked my interest. The fact that nobody my age had one was appealing. It was an unusual car to be into when all my peers had Integras and M3s, but that’s where people’s heads were in the early 2000s,” he said.

So much of the appeal of cars is the chance for personal expression. Not only did Hertel want to carve a niche for himself, but he also wanted to put his own personal stamp on his recent purchase. “Once I got [the Chevelle], all I wanted was to modify it. I ended up motor-swapping it, adding nitrous, upgrading the suspension, and making all the classic cosmetic touches you’d see back then—big Autometer tachs were the rage,” he laughed.

In 2012, as Hertel entered his twenties and began thinking of a fuller life, he started a company selling customizable sunglasses. The business would take up more and more of his time, forcing him to shelve his automotive antics for a while, which turned out to be a blessing: His dedication to what became Heatwave Visual paid off, and he found himself with the resources needed to realize some of his teenage dreams.

Around the same time, his old street-racing friends discovered road racing. They couldn’t stop raving about how fun and challenging it was. “The comment that really sold me was that track driving made the old street drags seem like child’s play. Plus, it was legal. There wasn’t much left to decide on, except which car I ought to use.”

That wasn’t the easiest of decisions. By then, Hertel owned a 1988 Winston Cup ex-Bobby Allison Buick Regal and a 1965 Lincoln Continental, as well as a 1965 Chevelle. The Lincoln was an obvious no, and he had already chosen the Regal as a promotional vehicle for his company. More to the point, he didn’t want to ball up a piece of history. Thankfully, he had another car—a 1988 Trans Am GTA, a modern classic he believed was best suited to the road course. Unlike the stock car, it could be replaced. So, the Trans Am became his blank canvas.

Hertel wanted more than just a track toy. He wanted something that he could drive to the track, enjoy lapping, and drive home in relative comfort. If the car turned a few heads in the parking lot, even better. The Trans Am was undeniably stylish, and as road car and one of the newer vehicles in his collection, it seemed like the best available option to build upon.

Eyes as Big as His Stomach

Though the Trans Am GTA came with a serviceable, tuned port injection 350 and a 700R4 automatic, Hertel decided to modernize the powertrain completely before taking the car to the track. In under a year, he successfully stuffed a Chevrolet LSA and a TR6060 gearbox from a 2014 Camaro ZL1 into the Trans Am’s bay. Like any engine swap, the project came with a few headaches.

The first iteration of the motor was mostly factory, but because the LSA responds so well to mild modifications, Hertel couldn’t leave it stock. With a Lingenfelter cam and springs, as well as a free-flowing intake, headers, and a two-into-one exhaust, Hertel was able to extract 620 horsepower and 618 lb-ft of torque, all to the rear wheels—about enough for a 3420-pound vehicle.

If the car had any chance to perform respectably with so much power, the chassis needed some reinforcement. Hertel decided to modernize the footwork with most of the Detroit Speed Engineering (DSE) catalog. “Since it’s a unibody car, it gets a lotta chassis twist. DSE’s weld-in side jacking rails or torque-box connecting tubes tie the rear and front structures together. Without those, you’re relying on floorpans and rocker panels for rigidity, which don’t do much.”

Hot Rodding Ain’t Racing

Though many of the parts were advertised to make the Trans Am suitable for the road course, it became clear that the setup was better suited to street usage. Originally, Hertel had thought that a set of Brembo four-piston calipers and 14-inch rotors from a Camaro ZL1 would do the trick. Though they looked great, and the parts were cheap, they began breaking down after a few events. You can’t avoid physics, and a heavy car with real power puts the binders through real pain. To make matters worse, the Hydroboost setup he had devised was causing unforeseen problems. It may have increased pedal pressure enough to improve confidence on the street, but the lack of modulation at track speeds was horrible. “It gave no feedback whatsoever, and running the system off of the power steering belt was dangerous.”

The experience shed some light on one of his long-held beliefs. “When you buy performance parts for a street car, especially when these kits are mashed up with a bunch of parts from different aftermarket manufacturers, you sometimes run into problems,” Hertel said. “The hot rod industry leads you towards parts which look trick or offer some comfort, but a lot of them don’t hold up under the abuse.”

Rather than try his luck on brakes with less than a racing pedigree, Hertel splurged on a set of radially mounted Wilwood Superlites, which were larger, stronger, and lighter than the ZL1’s. He chose to make the setup unassisted, too, giving him the modulation he needed to feel somewhat comfy bringing the big sled down to reasonable speeds. To add a little more Knight Rider style and to make the most of these big binders, Hertel opted for 18×11-inch Rotiform mesh wheels wrapped in 295-section Hoosier R7s or Falken RT660s.

Hertel began to take part in regular lapping days, as much as his work schedule would allow. As he grew comfortable pushing the big Trans Am, the added demands on the vehicle revealed more of the platform’s shortcomings. For one, he realized that going for a supercharged engine was a mistake. The LSA rarely ran a whole session without getting into the red—turns out, shoe-horning a hot-running motor into a cramped engine bay behind a pointed nose doesn’t allow for much circulation. The fact that the bay was only cooled by an antiquated radiator arrangement didn’t help.

Hertel was forced to add and improve. He began by replacing the Afco laydown radiator with a dual-pass, bar-and-plate style one built by a man who specializes in trophy trucks. He then added the secondary radiator, mounted upright behind the pointed front bumper. For more airflow, Hertel cut open up the bumper inlets and added ducting to feed the upright radiator. He hashed out the setup over a half-dozen prematurely finished track days and a dozen long nights. At last, the LSA could run sessions on warm days without overheating.

After swapping in a 6XD billet sequential transmission to save weight and reduce lap time—it allows the driver to shift with a lift of the throttle—he found himself in another pickle. “I got this [transmission] because the sequential, by design, minimizes the possibility of a misshift. I didn’t want to overspin the motor after putting so much into it. I didn’t take into account how the rev limiter stopped working when the car was wheelspinning until it was too late.”

Because the 6XD didn’t have a plug for the stock ECU to read wheel speed, one fateful burnout was followed by an alarming visual. When he saw the revs spike to 7400—1000 higher than the set redline—he was hit with the right hook of irony. The gearbox might’ve minimized the chances of a misshift, but the absence of a speed sensor made it easier to execute what was effectively a money shift.

Fixing the damage required several months and many more thousands of dollars. “The hydraulic lifter has a retaining clip for the top cap above the spring, and after it spun too high, it pushed that cap sideways and ejected the spring of the lifter, and that spring went through the motor and smoked all the bearings.”

Unimpressed but unfazed, Hertel installed what was essentially a stroked LS3 displacing 418 cubic inches: a similar motor to the LSA but without the LSA’s oil squirters. What it did have was a Comp Cams bumpstick, a trick valvetrain which retains hydraulic lifters for easier maintenance, a free-flowing exhaust, and a tune for E85. “On ethanol, we could get 680 horsepower while reducing engine temps. We also decided to run a Lingenfelter standalone rev limiter in place to avoid making the same mistake twice,” he laughed.

When the powertrain was finally working well, it exposed one more problem with the driveline. Though the custom Ford 8.8-inch rear end was rated for 900 horsepower, it was not too happy during the rapid downshifts made possible by the sequential gearbox. Plus, the rear end’s old-fashioned torque arm design had a frustrating tendency to wheelhop while downshifting. At best, this habit saps driver confidence and lengthens brake zones. But if your brake bias is off, you’re going for a ride.

“The torque arm has one point of contact at the top; the trailing arm is mounted at the bottom, and the arm connects at the center of the axle, and even though there’s little play at that point, that is just magnified at the outer ends of the axle. That play could be as little as a 1/100th of an inch of play at the axle, but that might be 1/8th of an inch at the wheel. Since the Quadralink has four points of attachment, it doesn’t allow the axle to shake back and forth much,” he explained.

As manageable as these modifications made the car, it still remains a handful. Frightening, head-turning, and hilarious, a precision instrument it is not. After all the work needed to get the muscle car into track-ready shape, the result has somehow fallen short of his expectations. “I’m constantly guessing at the braking zones and wondering, ‘Will it stick?’’ he admitted, chuckling faintly.

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Healthy Post-Fantasy Realizations

As he now knows, in order for this dual-purpose muscle car to achieve the level of performance he hoped it would have, everything would have to be stripped, reworked, simplified, and sharpened. The car would lose a lot of its road-worthiness. “You just cannot have the best of both worlds.”

There is always some sort of compromise in this fence-straddling style of build. Once your skills have been honed to a point of discernment, the streetable nature starts to detract from the racing experience. The dual-duty track toy might have some appeal to a novice, but even as Hertel continued to wrench on his Trans Am, he started racing for real, in a much different car.

Thankfully, the new racer didn’t eat at his bank account nearly as much as the big Pontiac did. As he sees it, his Spec Miata is the little purpose-built machine that has next to no flaws, aside from its lack of straight-line speed. “I can hop in and lap all day. I know exactly what it’s going to do, and I don’t worry about anything breaking. If I can turn laps, hand it off to my friend, and trust the thing won’t break on me, I’m happy,” he declared. After all the pain the teenage dream put him through, he’s grown to accept the realities of racing and, thankfully, hasn’t gotten jaded by the experience.

As for the Trans Am, he’s mostly content with the way it’s turned out, despite its shortcomings. A reliable-enough street-track hybrid has its strengths, and few cars are as fun to overdrive, but his dreams of turning an aging muscle car into a track toy have been dashed by the seemingly endless list of mechanical problems that kept him from enjoying the car for so long. “It was always a thrash to get the car fixed before a track day to fix some phantom problem, and then there was usually another issue to address at the track day,” he sighed. It wasn’t until two months ago that he was able to enjoy his first trouble-free weekend in the Trans Am.

Despite the build falling a little short of its aim, the Trans Am build has made Hertel a more pragmatic man—maybe even a more philosophical one. He can have the fun he’s after in the featherweight Miata, he knows where to put his energy, and he knows how to derive maximum satisfaction from minimal effort.

Even so, he hasn’t retired his teenage dream yet. If he wants to make a statement or scare himself, he can strap into the Trans Am. He’s still happy to beat on the car, and he enjoys the way this unusual car sparks conversation with excited onlookers and new friends in the parking lot.

For as much of a reality check as building the Trans Am has been, there’s no denying that it stirs up emotion in a way that a refined, well-sorted racing car would struggle to. For that reason, the frustration has been worthwhile; if the Trans Am can dredge up those fading feelings of teenage infatuation in the owner and its many fans, then it has to be seen as a success, rough edges or not.