PPG Turbo Grand Prix Pace Car

[Turbo v-sick]

Has anybody seen this before?

[GOT2B GM]

interesting!

[White93z34]

I.... no... never seen that before.

[BrianG]

WHOA!!! I've never seen or heard about that one. Real???

[redgrandprix]

whoa...

[mfewtrail]

I've never seen it before, but I believe Jeff M. acknowledged the existence of it on his now defunct website. Thanks for the picture Adam. Where did you come across it?

 

 

Edit: "A total of 26 proto-type Turbo Grand Prixs and TSTEs were built, starting off with 2 gold 1988 Grand Prix SEs one of which was sent to be assembled and setup by Frank Peterson Racing/Leo Payne Pontiac and raced at Pikes Peak taking the Show Room Stock win over the heavier AWD GMC (prototype as well, possibly with the Buick GN Turbo Motor) Syclone at the time. There was also initially 1 burgundy LE that was a turbo test-bed, and 1 white Turbo Grand Prix 2-door, 2 red Turbo Grand Prixs 2-doors, 4 black Turbo Grand Prix 2-doors and 2 red TSTE. There were also 7 Pace Cars of which headed up the 1989 Daytona 500 and 5 which were used in the 1990 movie Days of Thunder with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid and Robert Duvall. There was also mention of a rear wheel drive Turbo Grand Prix Pace Car. There was also a yellow 2-tone down the center, Turbo Grand Prix. Last there was one convertible red Turbo Grand Prix that was likely a custom aftermarket."

Edited October 15, 2013 by mfewtrail

[Garrett Powered]

this is the most exciting news of 2013. Jeff M never mentioned this as a PPG pace car though. I have never heard of or seen this before.

 

sticky thread needs updating..

[94 olds vert]

This is news to me.

[Euro]

WOW. This made my day and it's only 8am. That's so cool.

 

Now the hunt is on for finding any PPG race from 89/90

[Turbo v-sick]

I've never seen it before, but I believe Jeff M. acknowledged the existence of it on his now defunct website. Thanks for the picture Adam. Where did you come across it?

I won them off ebay from a seller that claimed he used to work for the PPG pace car team. There was a model car painted up as well.

[BrianG]

Lookee!!!

http://vb.foureyedpride.com/showthread.php?120162-SVO-PPG-pace-car

[Garrett Powered]

the color is different than the pikes's peak race car. I wonder what they call it?

[BrianG]

The Pike's car was just a dark gold, and it had a standard 88 SE body, no B4M. This pace car is definitely yellow.

[redgrandprix]

so its hopefully in a museum somewhere being taken care of... I like the yellow paint

[mfewtrail]

The Pike's car was just a dark gold, and it had a standard 88 SE body, no B4M. This pace car is definitely yellow.

 

It appears the center bottom of the kit is possibly gold in that top picture. Would make sense being that article blurb stated it's two-tone down the center.

 

 

Need to start signing up for other PPG related site and asking for pictures. I'm sure someone out there has some more pictures of it.

 

 

EDIT: Can see it peaking out in this picture also...

[Euro]

To the OP, did you get the model car along with the picture? That's so cool looking.

[TGP5sp90]

Great find, finally these pictures are true, that I truly did not believe in for years.

[Turbo v-sick]

To the OP, did you get the model car along with the picture? That's so cool looking.

I wish. No one seems to know the fate of the pace car and the model. The general consensuses was that it was given back to the manufacture, sold for the manufacture(auction) or was donated to a museum. The car was removed from the PPG fleet sometime in 1993. Every car given back to the manufacture was to be destroyed.

[White93z34]

So it met a fate not too dissimilar of the Pikes Peak car (I wonder what ever became of it)

[88red4cyl]

There was a fleet of 5 or 6 PPG pace car Fiero's back in the 80s that they used. They had different body kits on them, and were pretty unique. When PPG got rid of them, several of the cars ended up being donated to tech schools to learn on, and at least a couple of them still exist and have been photographed semi-recently.. I bet this car is still kicking around somewhere, whether it be in a museum, or maybe in a tech school somewhere..

[Euro]

Heck, maybe it's still in GM's private collection for all we know. I've heard they still have a ton of cars that haven't been seen by anyone outside of GM

[Luke94vert]

If you watch this weeks fast n loud. Rich was in the exclusive gm collection in detroit. IIRC he guy said they had some 450 cars in the private gm collection. Gm has to invite you to go see it.

[BrianG]

So it met a fate not too dissimilar of the Pikes Peak car (I wonder what ever became of it)

 

The Pike's car end up going to a consignor in Las Vegas and was for sale ~$13k for a long time. I thought I remember hearing that someone from here bought it a couple years ago but only bought it to strip it for parts?

[Euro]

Yeah, I thought TGPilot or whomever else made chips similar to the Jeff M chip bought it...stripped it's guts, and scrapped it?

[no1kicker]

I remember reading that most cars like that wouldn't have a vin and could not be legally titled.

 

The rear seats look a little different and I noticed no steering wheel controls.