Interview - TTA Intake/Cylinder Head Engineer

I

its2qik

Active Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2010
Pulled up to the shop today after going to a show in the TTA. "Birdie" (this is how everyone knows him) has a shop next door to my shop. I have talked to him many times over the last couple of years, but he didn't know I bought the TTA. As soon as he saw the car he walked over to me and started telling me stories about this car. Turns out he worked at PAS, knew Jeff Bietzel well, and worked on the development team for these engines.

Also, interesting thing he shares is that Jeff gave him one of the development mules, a red TTA, as a gift. He tells the story in this video. Give it a listen, I think you'll enjoy it.

I'm going to try to get with him again soon to ask him some more questions!

YouTube - ‪Interview - 1989 Turbo Trans Am Engine Developer‬‏
 
Have him come out to the reunion in July! Scott Kelly, Billy Briggs, and several others that worked at PAS will be there!
 
Very cool, thanks for sharing.

Would be interesting to know when in time Jeff gave the "red" car to him? If this is the maroon mule car (pre-production cars where all white and all 1989 model year; mules were all 1988 cars) as far as I've been told this was used by porky (Mike Portobello) one of the owners of Triad (so PAS parent company or similar) and he then sold it in 1990 / 1992 or so ...

There's roumers about another "red" mule car but not sure if that is true or not ... there's defenitly a black one used for the emission testing and I've been told there were two used for emission testing but not sure if both were black or not?

Ask him if the red mule had digital gauges, if so it must been the maroon TTA use by porky; this was the garage queen and is today in Atlanta along with the black emission car.

Would he have any photos, documents etc from the PAS days to share with us all?
 
phillyturbosix said:
Have him come out to the reunion in July! Scott Kelly, Billy Briggs, and several others that worked at PAS will be there!
Click to expand...

Why don't you guys give him an official invite. I'm sure he'd like to come to the event. In fact, right after he left me he mentioned after I shut the camera off that he was going to call Billy Briggs and ask him about some of the details.

Birdie mentioned to me that he was already working for PAS and was responsible for helping Billy get hired into the company. Billy did engine assembly while Birdie did development work.
 
its2qik said:
Why don't you guys give him an official invite. I'm sure he'd like to come to the event. In fact, right after he left me he mentioned after I shut the camera off that he was going to call Billy Briggs and ask him about some of the details.

Birdie mentioned to me that he was already working for PAS and was responsible for helping Billy get hired into the company. Billy did engine assembly while Birdie did development work.
Click to expand...

Jim can you get an invite to Birdie he can't refuse; sounds like he and Billy would make a good tag team presenting @ the event !
 
I'll contact him and get him out. From what I heard a lot of the PAS employees heard about the reunion and are coming out. Can you PM me his info. I'll call him up for sure!
 
tta983 said:
Great, thanks for sharing. Just curious where Flame might be now.
Click to expand...


redtta1.jpg

redtta2.jpg
 
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