Tyler Pitman – TylerP
I can honestly say that I never expected to fall in love with a car like I have with mine! It all started back when I was 13 years old (currently 17) and I was just itching to buy a car to work on for when I was ready to drive. I hopped on craigslist and started looking for cheap $300 cars and wasn’t having any luck, but then I came across an ad that said “1995 CHEVY BERETTA NEEDS WORK!” now at the time I had no clue what the heck a Beretta even was so I checked it out. To me even though it was a base, it still looked like a pretty neat looking little car so I had my dad call them up, mowed a couple of yards for the cash, and was on my way to pick it up that next weekend!
When we first pulled up to the house the poor old thing was crammed in between a fence and a garage and was just covered in trash, but I still could see the potential in her. We uncovered it gave it a good look over and brought it home. Then for the next couple of days I was scrubbing and cleaning like crazy! After countless hours it finally started looking like a pretty decent ride. At that point I needed to put a new 2.2 in….so just before I turned 15 I went out into the garage and I did an engine swap with an engine I bought from a junkyard down the road. After all that was done I found an aqua blue Z that needed an engine and that thing was clean! My dad and I picked it up for $400 and soon came to realize that it was too far rusted out underneath on the rear shock towers to repair. So what did I do? I took everything but the engine and trans and converted my base to a z26 clone. Soon after, I found myself some euro headlights from an old member on bstuff for $160 and started to do create the car I had always envisioned. I can honestly say that I love absolutely everything about my car, it has come a long way from what it started as and I am proud to say that it is mine. Whenever somebody laughs at the fact it’s eretta I just simply tell them the mods that I have done to it and they shut right up and those mods would be….Neon disc brakes, Z51 rear sway bar, FE7 front sway bar, strut tower brace, z34 hood vents (thanks to Styluss), Euro tails (thanks to summitbalt), new front Z bumper with mach 1 chin spoiler (thanks to summitbalt), 93 subframes (thanks to summitbalt), GTZ wheels, Power windows, sunroof, 95 GA third brake light, GTU spoiler, Black interior excluding seats, red gauge needles, 3400/4t60e swap, OBD II swap (thanks to summitbalt), GTU mirrors, Tinted windows, GA shift boot, Eldorado shift knob, stereo, quantam cozmik 12” sub woofers with 3000 watt planet audio amp, sunroof, removed door strips, v6 HO emblems, and there is probably some small things I am forgetting, but that is all the big noticeable changes. As you can all tell I have been helped out a lot by members on here and I admire each and every Beretta on this forum! Its incredible how much knowledge is floating around on here and from that knowledge I have learned how to accomplish my final mods that will be done…I am currently in the middle of a 3500/intercooled turbo swap with all black engine bay and polished accents and hopefully after this swap is done I can move on to getting my seats reupholstered to match the interior, new wheels, grand am IRS, and corvette front disc brakes!
I am sure that I will come up with more things I will want to do along the way, but this car is my baby and because of that car and this community I have learned a lot! I never realized how much could be done with a little bit of ingenuity and some research. I currently drive this car as a daily driver with a cool 223,xxx miles on it. Here soon I will be getting my GTZ and using that as a daily driver so I can give my base a break. A lot of memories and friendships have been made with this car and I would just like to thank everyone on this forum for all of the information and help you have given me. Hope you guys enjoyed this little write up and keep an eye out for my 90 GTZ and 91 base 3.1/5 speed to pop up around here somewhere.
