The Brother's Collection owns 4
Wade Ogle owns 1
Dana Mecum owns 1
Rob Lozens owns 1
Rick Mahoney owns 1

Can't say I fully agree on that. Road tests of the day complained of a great deal of understeer/plowing because of the placement of the "big" 400. And it's a car that took the name of a race series but never really set foot on any of the starting lines of that series in any serious way...isn't that the very definition of a "stickers" car?

I say all that with a note of full disclosure: Of the couple dozen or 30 musclecars I've owned, 9 of them have been Trans Ams - love 'em.

No sir, a "stickers car" would be a model that had no performance improvements over the car it was derived from. Not that the model didn't have great performance to start with, but the addition of "stickers and a wing" served no functional purpose other than to draw attention.

The 1969 Trans Am was designed and marketed towards the more serious performance enthusiast. The extra tooling required to produce each car, plus the extra prep work, made the price of the Trans Am option a bit much and sales were sluggish. It was supposed to be Pontiac's entry into the SCCA Trans Am Series, but those plans fell through when the 303 Ram Air V engine did not make production.

Back to why only 8 Trans Am convertibles were sold. It's understandable as the Trans Am was not designed or marketed as a "sunny day cruiser". Chevrolet didn't offer the 1969 Z/28 in convertible form, and neither did Ford with their 1969 Boss 302 Mustang.

In any event, the 1969 Trans Am was the best handling Pontiac ever built.....up to that point. Unfortunately, Pontiacs suffered in the handling department (compared to other makes) because John DeLorean did not like rear sway bars. When he left Pontiac in Feb 1969, 1970 Pontiac models were offered with rear sway bars. http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/happy/happy0024.gif

I was just thinking of this,after your last reply to mine.
Interesting.

I always found that to be a bizarre stance for him to take - the proof of their effectiveness was there.

Anyways, the '69 Trans Am convertible's low production numbers are due to the same reasons as Hemi Cuda convertibles' low production numbers: they were both expensive and unnecessary niche exercises. Basically, a product created for a market that was not there.