Just signed up, been lurking awhile. I'm active on many forums, but my F-body experience is a '94 Camaro V6 (that I lifted and put 30" BFGs on in '97 - lol!). I also briefly had an '86 Formula in '99, then an '11 1SS in '11, and most recently a '98 Trans Am that I picked up as a beater when times were tight and sold a year ago. Now I'm looking for a '98-'02 T/A as a toy car. Looking for a driver, not a shower, and black is the only requirement, would prefer WS6 but not a deal breaker, and would prefer a manual, but not afraid to swap to a 6spd in the future.

Is my logic correct in that I think it would be better to get the color I want, because doing a true color change including door jambs and such is way more expensive and involved than changing the tranny?

Anyway, glad to be here and thanks for all the help with my '98 over the last 2 years ( I lurked a bunch of threads for advice on stuff)

 

It's better to wait for the car you really want than rush things and not be happy.

 

LOL, I think I might have a picture of this car:



Absolutely. A proper color change is a bunch of work, and will require significant disassembly to look correct (especially the engine bay, since it's not black for all exterior colors like many older GM cars were). Just a simple repaint in the original color will be expensive to do nicely, but adding a quality color swap to that project is going to be extremely expensive (exponentially more than the trans swap).

With that said, it shouldn't be too hard to find a black WS6 Trans Am with an M6; that's one of the most common combinations for the WS6 model.

 

Thanks for all the input! Wish I had a pic of my '94 to share, it was more rally car than monster truck though However, it was red!

 

Finally picked one up! This was the 9th car I ran a carfax on, and the 4th I saw in person. It was also, by far, the closest one, as I could literally ride my bike to where it was sitting, but had driven 30-75 minutes to look at the other 3. She's a 2002 base T/A with 87K and 6 spd and traction control, black/ebony, for about $7900. She isn't perfect, but for a driver that's going to sit in the driveway, she is a perfect as it gets! Has the usual issues - cracked dash and door panels, bubbling sail panel, water in rear light, but I'll get to all that soon! She's also lowered and has C6 wheels and tires with firebird center caps. That's the only mods - everything else is stock including the working CD player