The Pontiac Trans Am Convertible Rarer Than Any Hemi ‘Cuda, With Just Eight Ever Built
Muscle car rarity usually comes down to a handful of famous names, and most collectors can recite them from memory. But one of America’s best-known performance badges hides a factory production run so small that it makes a Hemi ‘Cuda convertible look almost common by comparison.
Only eight of these cars were ever built, and each one can be traced down to its top color and transmission. Half of them now sit together inside a single, secretive collection in Oregon.
Hagerty has suggested a documented example would cost around $1,000,000 if one ever came up for sale. The badge involved is the last one most people would expect.
The Muscle Car Unicorn Even Rarer Than A Hemi ‘Cuda
The golden era produced plenty of low-volume legends, and the Hemi ‘Cuda convertible usually tops the list. Plymouth built 14 of them in 1970 and 12 more in 1971, with only 11 of those later cars documented today. Those numbers made the Hemi ‘Cuda convertible the benchmark for muscle car scarcity, with values that have climbed past $3,000,000.
The car in question undercuts all of them. With just eight examples built in a single model year, it is rarer than any Hemi ‘Cuda convertible ever made.
It also beats most of the one-year specials from the era’s boutique builders. Shelby American, famous for tiny production runs, built four GT350 convertibles in 1966, and even those cars have better name recognition than the eight-car run we’re talking about here.
The strangest part is that this was not some obscure trim package from a forgotten brand. This car launched a nameplate that went on to become one of the most famous in American performance history, and the name on its fender is one everybody knows.
Pontiac Built Just Eight Trans Am Convertibles In 1969
The car is the 1969 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am convertible, the rarest version of the very first Trans Am. Pontiac introduced the Trans Am Performance and Appearance Package in March 1969 with little fanfare and no advertising campaign behind it. The option carried code WS4 and cost about $725, though pricing varied slightly by body style and transmission.
The late launch and quiet rollout kept orders low across the board. Pontiac built just 697 Trans Ams for the entire 1969 model year, a figure confirmed by Hagerty and backed up by 78ta.com’s line-item production data. Of those, 689 were hardtop coupes and only 8 were convertibles.
Every 1969 Trans Am left the factory in Cameo White with blue racing stripes, so all eight convertibles shared the same look. The WS4 package added the Ram Air III V8, heavy-duty running gear, a rear deck lid airfoil, functional hood scoops, and front fender air extractors. Convertibles carried a base price of around $3,770, a meaningful premium over the coupe’s roughly $3,556 window sticker.
Then the body style vanished as quickly as it arrived. Pontiac dropped the Firebird convertible for 1970, when the second-generation car debuted as a coupe only. That decision made these eight cars the only factory Trans Am convertibles built for more than a decade, and it locked their production number in place forever.
All Eight Cars Shared The Same 335-HP Ram Air III V8
|
Engine |
Transmission |
Power |
Torque |
|
6.6-liter Ram Air III V8 (L74) |
4-speed manual or 3-speed automatic |
335 hp |
430 lb-ft |
All eight convertibles left the factory with the same engine, and it was not the one many enthusiasts assume. Every car received the 400-cubic-inch Ram Air III V8, engine code L74, which was the standard Trans Am powerplant. The hotter Ram Air IV never made it into a single convertible, with all 55 of those engines going into coupes.
Pontiac rated the 6.6-liter Ram Air III at 335 hp at 5,000 rpm and 430 lb-ft of torque at 3,400 rpm. Published figures have drifted over the years, with Hagerty listing 330 hp and others floating 366 hp, but 335 hp was Pontiac’s official factory rating. Period testers widely considered that number conservative.
The engine ran 10.75:1 compression and breathed through a Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor fed by functional hood scoops. The WS4 package backed it with a 3.55 Safe-T-Track limited-slip differential, power front disc brakes, and a 1-inch front sway bar.
The only real mechanical variety among the eight cars was the transmission. Exactly four received the Muncie four-speed manual, and four received the three-speed Turbo Hydra-Matic automatic, a perfect split confirmed by Pontiac production records.
Where All Eight Trans Am Convertibles Are Today
Pontiac never published a factory registry for these cars, and no outlet has printed a complete one since. But the paper trail covers most of the run, and piecing it together reveals where the majority of the eight convertibles ended up.
Four of the eight now live under one roof at The Brothers Collection, a private museum hidden in an industrial complex in Salem, Oregon. The holdings include both the first and last convertibles built by serial number. The first car off the line is an automatic ordered with power windows, one of the few in the run to get them.
One of the best-known cars outside the collection belonged to Charles Adams, an executive at Pontiac’s ad agency. His convertible was the highest-optioned of the eight, a four-speed loaded with a power top, tilt steering wheel, AM/FM radio, and Rally gauges. Adams kept the car until 2007, nearly four decades after it was built.
The collection also holds a blue-top automatic, one of just three cars fitted with a blue convertible top. The other five wore white tops, giving the tiny run its own internal rarity ladder.
Then there is the triple-white car, the only example with a white body, white interior, and white top. It began life as a Pontiac division company car before Robert Lauze of Houston, Pennsylvania acquired it in April 1970, trading his 1967 Firebird plus $3,295. Pontiac specialist Scott Tiemann later gave it a concours-level restoration.
One car stands apart for what it lacks: it was ordered without the Trans Am fender and hood decals, making it the most anonymous-looking member of the run. Yet not every car has a publicly documented ownership chain, and that gap is the closest thing Pontiac has to a ghost story.
If A Coupe Brings $440,000, What’s A Convertible Worth?
The coupes set the floor for what this market will pay. A documented Ram Air III coupe sold for $210,100 in April 2024, while a Ram Air IV coupe brought $440,000 in 2023. Both were cars from a production run in the hundreds.
That makes the math on the convertibles simple. If a coupe from a run of 634 clears $440,000, a convertible from a run of eight with clean provenance is a different conversation entirely.
The auction record backs that up. Two of the convertibles crossed the block at Mecum Kissimmee in 2016, bidding to $1,900,000 and $1,400,000, and neither one sold. The owners already value these cars beyond what bidders have been willing to pay.
Mecum executives suggested at the time that the triple-white car could bring as much as $3,000,000, while Hagerty pegs realistic expectations at around $1,000,000. Nobody really knows, because the cars almost never trade hands.
With half the run locked inside one Oregon warehouse, the market may never get a genuine chance to price these cars. The rarest Trans Am ever built has become rare enough to be nearly invisible.
Sources: General Motors, Hagerty, Mecum Auctions, The Brothers Collection, 78ta.com
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