story time, how did berettas earn your intetest?

[weba]

I'll post my story of 10 years with Beretta ownership later when I have time, way to busy lately to even check the forums..

Currently building a new 2-car garage for my Berettas, and it comes with a house attached!

[ifixalot]

I saw the Berettas when they first came out. I thought they were a good looking car.
1st daughter turned 16 and needed a car. I had heard Berettas were galvanized & slow to rust.
I can fix a lot of stuff but I hate rust. So I started looking for a Beretta for her.
I found a 90 GT that was solid but beat up on the front end. I bought it and knocked out as much
bent stuff as practical. They say new drivers have a 40% chance of having an accident so I didn't want
to waste time and money. The car had the typical problems but over time, I got them all fixed.
The daughter never had any accident that was her fault so we started looking for a nicer Beretta.
Meantime, she got rear-ended by one of those drivers who has fly by night insurance.
My daughter stopped for a school bus but the other driver didn't. Fortunately, it just bent the bumper
down. My daughter was pissed at that other driver and the insurance company was saying it my part my daughters
fault for stopping suddenly. We were lucky enough to find a lawyer who helped us get her a small sum of money.
When my daughter went shopping with mom, I hooked her car with a chain to a strong ash tree in the yard.
I was able to straighten the bumper. When she got home she was delighted to see her car back to normal.
I found a 92 GT that looked okay but turned out to be not so good. I fixed all the crap was wrong with it and wouldn't you know,
a truck pulls out in front of me and I hit a brick sign trying to avoid it. During the quest for parts to repair that car.
I found a 96 Z26 with a bad engine. We bought it and I found a guy on Craigslist to put in an engine.
Back to the 92, I was finally able to get the trucking company to pay me for the car and a little extra for expenses.
I did the same trick with the tree to help pull the frame rail straight enough to use without welding in donor parts.
I got a mini van full of parts from Michigan and got the 92 up and running again.
I started driving the 92 as my daughter was loving her Z26 now. We had the 90 as a spare car.
I would browse Craigslist now and then and see who was selling what. I found nice looking 96 Z26.
It was identical to my daughter's. They guy selling it made me an offer I couldn't refuse so I bought it.
So now we had four Berettas in the family. Little by little I went through my 96 and replaced things like the gas tank,
radiator, fixed the firewall leak etc. Finally, I decided to start driving it. I had owned it over a year and it was sitting in the garage.
Somebody on Craigslist wanted a dependable car for $1000. I showed him the 92. I explained the accident and showed him my
ad-hoc repair. He drove the car and liked enough to give me $1000 for it. A bit later we were selling my other daughter's car, a 92
Buick century. The guy who looked at that and bought it also wanted the 90 Beretta. I had a heck of a time getting my daughter
to part with it. She had a lot of sentimental feelings for that car being her first car but ultimately, she agreed it was best to let it go.
So now the daughter has been out of the house for over three years now. She still has and loves her Z26. I just went over last night
and put in a new battery. She is planning her wedding and she has no plans to get rid of her Beretta. If it were practical, she like to
have the rockers replaced but the car is getting close to 200K miles on it.
I have my 96 and it's got about 140K on it. I have no plans to sell it either. Both cars are getting so old they are starting to get looks on the street.
I drove past a kid waiting for the bus and he stared at my car as I went by. I wonder if he realized my car was older than him?
I had somebody else at the gas station remark what good condition my car is in.
At this point though, I doubt we'll be buying anymore Berettas, if these go it's time for something else.

[whiteretta]

Well when I was about 14 or 15, someone from the school I went to had just started driving and had a beautiful teal Beretta GT with the teal mesh wheels. I remember the body lines and the color matching wheels, and I loved the way it sounded! Ever since then, I had always loved them.

I didn't buy my first Beretta until I was 19, but the car pretty much fell into my lap, a 1989 V6 base model. A friend had one that was her first car, and it was sitting infront of her house with what she thought was a blown head gasket. I just needed a winter beater, to keep my nice car ( an '85 LTD I was restoring ) off the road. She told me $150 and I could have it. Turned out, it just needed a thermostat! I drove it for about 2 1/2 years, repainted it and did a lot of cleaning up.

Sold the car for a shocking $2500 to buy a Bonneville, but got bored of the Bonneville after a year and bought my '94 base for $700 which I have owned for about five years now!

[93BerettaV6]

I wanted a beretta from the time I saw that commercial with the shark. I was in college at the time and wasn't able to buy a new car so I waited. My brother later bought one of the 1987 models at a used lot. It was a blue base with the V6. We traded cars for a bit and I was as to drive it and really loved it. I finished college and went on to finish graduate school. In early 1994 I bought a white 1993 base V6. It had been wrecked during a test drive and repaired at the dealer. I was able to pick it up at a very good price. It's been with me since then. It took my wife to the hospital when my daughter was born and given me countless other memories. It now spends snowy and rainy days in the garage, but I still drive it regularly. The only thing I've really changed has been the wheel as the original wheel covers were looking a little shabby. You can't let that happen to such a pretty car.


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[96B-Mike]

Before I purchased my 1996 Chevy Beretta base I recently just sold my Chevy S-10. Desperately looking for a car,but obviously looking for a good one. I only had about $1000-1200. My neighbor at the time said he had a friend that was selling a car (he brought it, then sold it to me..obviously made profit off of my ass lol) I honestly never heard of a Beretta before..It only had 56,*** miles on it with working A/C!!...and that was about 3.5 years ago..now ever since i tumbled over this website..you guys are the reason why i dumped so much on it now!!! haha

[2.2H8TA]

Ok, my LONG Beretta story.

Let me start by saying my name is Hanz aka 2.2H8TA and I am addicted to Chevrolet Berettas.
I am now 21, and my father is to blame for my addiction to these cars!

I was about 7 when this madness all began.
My dad purchased a 1990 2.2L Auto base model Beretta used. Car had low miles, around 20k or so I think. From the moment I laid eyes on it I was hooked. Maybe it was the bright red color? Anyway, the car ran and lasted a good amount of time. He drove it up to about 80k miles, and at that time, that damn 2.2 blew it's headgasket. The car was getting old, and had it's other problems also (mostly interior problems). He was on the hunt for another used car to buy, and we went back to the dealer he purchased the 90 from. They had a 2DR. V6 5 speed 94 Cavy that caught his eye, also red. Test drove, and went on our way to shop some more. After a week or so of looking, and finding nothing we returned to that lot to see the Cavy again. It was gone! Sitting in the same spot was a 95 (1 year newer!) bright red Beretta. It was also a 2.2 automatic car, with crank windows (BASE!). The car had 36K and was in real nice shape. The newer style interior was great. He test drove that, and made the deal. He drove that car a lot too, well until about 86k miles, when that 2.2 blew it's headgasket too. The car was still in nice shape, so he had the work done. Head was cracked, so he got a reman head. A few hundred bucks later it was running as good as new. He drove it for a few more years, up to about 127k, and the 2.2 acted up again. Headgasket! By that time I was 16. He had plans on me getting a job, and fixing it for myself to drive, so it sat. He went and bought a black 02 Monte Carlo LS (nice car). Things didn't go as planned with me fixing the Beretta, and he missed driving it. One day we were talking about it and we went out to the parking lot and fired her up. (Started right up after sitting a whole winter outside!) We put some stop leak in it, and drove it to the shop. Pulling out of the parking place, a brake line blew out, so we had it towed to the shop. Upon further inspection we found that it was completely destroyed underneath! RUST! No rockers left, and worse....
This all began the hunt for a replacement. He had the Monte still, and honestly that car wasn't the greatest. It had been hit, and the poor body work was starting to age. I browsed CL one evening and came across a beautiful 1996 Z26 not too far from us! The car was listed with 57K miles, and guess what color it was! Bright red! I promptly got on the phone with the seller, and asked if he was interested in trades. He said he was selling it because he had trouble getting in and out of it, but loved the “sportiness” of it. I told him my dad had the Monte, and he agreed to have a look. His Z was NICE, and he liked the Monte for it's size, so they traded. My father has that car still. We shared it for a while, and I absolutely fell in love with the feel of the V6, compared to the 2.2 in the base, and the FE3 suspension package it has felt excellent too. That car has been discussed here before and most know of the stupid problems it's had and still has, but we still love that damn car. Below is a photo of the 95 before being scrapped, next to the 96 Z, followed by a shot of the red 96 Z26.

All of that leads me up to November 2012. After sharing the red Z for a while, I had saved up enough money to start my quest for my own Beretta. The previously mentioned 95 2.2 base had been scrapped,
and we had an empty spot for another car. I hopped on CL, and almost immediately stumbled across a Bright Aqua Metallic 1994 Z26 for a steal! The car was about 50 miles away, so I called, and the next day we took the 96 on a trip to see the 94. I have to say, I wasn't expecting much for the price, but man I got lucky! It was a 4 owner PA car with 145K on it, and was RUST FREE! The car was mechanic owned, so it had the intakes and headgasket had been replaced recently, and correctly along with a bunch of other newer parts with receipts in the owners manual! I test drove it, and it was real nice. It needed a muffler, so it was loud but other than that it was strong. Not perfect, but for the price I couldn't pass it up. I still daily drive this car, and I have plans for it. Really all that car needs is paint to look 100%, and shocks and struts soon to feel 100%. I do have bigger plans for it however. Really I have nothing bad to say about that car, as it has been very good to me and I love it!

To be continued
My Beretta story, like many others is still being written daily! For now I've got my 1994 aqua Z26 sitting next to my fathers 1996 red Z26. They both get driven and are loved no matter how big a pain in the ass they can be at times! They are cars, and as far as I'm concerned all cars get to be pains in the ass over time, but I'd rather have these pains in the ass over any others! I enjoy driving a Beretta more than any other car I have driven. Sure, I may be young, but I have driven quite a few cars as I now work as a used car salesman. (Berettas may be partially to blame for that too.) Not only am I now a “Beretta Guy”, I have always been a car guy at heart, but Berettas stole it!

[Rettax3]

My Beretta story (like most of my tales) is a long one, with many turns, like a windy canyon road in the night, each new twist holds secrets elusive to the headlights searching through them. I've owned about thirty cars and more vehicles as well over the last 35+ years, but I've owned more Berettas than any other specific vehicle. The community here keeps my interest in these cars honed.

I liked the Berettas from when I first noticed them, maybe a year or two after they first came out. But I hadn't gotten a good hate on for Fords yet, so I also liked the first-gen Probes back then. I was semi-seriously looking at both cars when my attention got turned back around to the Camaros by a black IROC Z-28 that came creeping malevolently through the snow while I was out for a walk one night -but that is a whole different story. It took several years before I was reminded of how much I liked the Berettas, and by then the whole GTZ/Z-26 sub-model difference had slipped by me, so I was still looking at base-model cars. Coincidentally, I started dating a woman who had purchased a five-speed V-6 car as part of her life re-construction after a lot of things fell apart for her. The car was blue on blue, looked nice, ran great, but handled like absolute piss (I later found out it was all due to rock-hard tires). I liked the car instantly, and enjoyed driving it almost as much as I liked driving my '88 Camaro. Over the next few years, I replaced the belt, alternator, rebuilt the power-steering pump, replaced the front brake pads (Raybestos -those pads are still on the car and stop it on a dime), replaced the clutch and the transaxle oil-seals, and even replaced one rear wheel bearing and wheel after damaging them on a curb (darn tires!) after loosing control and fish-tailing the car avoiding some idiot who flew across multiple lanes of traffic. The paint was still good then, aside from two small spots that had peeled away from the primer, and the interior was almost immaculate. I had installed a Pioneer CD player for her too, and rebuilt the badly-constructed ignition-lock to better-than-new condition. But, all good things must end, and she decided to sell the car in favor of an automatic, due to her bad knees and commuting in heavy stop-and-go traffic. I offered to buy the car, and paid $750 for it after she had received a dealership offer for about half that as trade. All bad things must end too, and about a year later, we too went our separate ways, but at least the car stayed with me! And so the addiction took hold... Some time after that, I learned about the GTZs with their sportier Z04 body-kits and HO Quads, and then I encountered my first V-8 powered Beretta and learned about the Indys, and now I was really intrigued. What else was there to these cars? I started having problems with the original five-speed right about the time I was trying to upgrade the engine to a 3400/3.1 MPFI hybrid, but I didn't know that my 3400 block had eaten its' rear main bearing, and I ended up pulling the whole drivetrain back out and replaced the five-speed with a junk-yard replacement and dropped the LG5 turbo 3.1 back in the car in disgust... Only to find that the new five-speed was missing 3rd and 4th. Oh, the Beretta bug had started biting back, and now I was starting to seriously dislike the cars...

No, that isn't an intercooler in front of the engine, NGT! That is a heater-core, I used it to cool the coolant a little extra before piping it to the turbo...

I found an ad for a rough non-running "dark red" '95 Z-26, and was told that the car had a five-speed, I figured it would be a good donor if nothing else. I drove a long way to see the car, only to find a Black Rose Metallic with an auto in it. Not my favorite color, and I hate automatics. But the interior was very clean, and the outside of the car was not as rough as I had been led to believe, and the price of $300-something was fine -I planned on fixing and selling this car, or maybe keeping the Z-26 wheels I had been searching for for about a year already. I used my gear-limited blue turbo 'Retta to pull the car home, fixed the Z in the gravel driveway in sub-zero temperatures over nights (I had no time during the day). The poor car had been overheated so badly that the valve-guides had come loose and the radiator tanks blown-out. I sold it to my niece who desperately needed a car, but they did not get along well together. I told her to drive it gently for the first 500 miles at least, as the gaskets were all fresh in the engine, but a few days later she beemingly told me how the car zipped right up to 110 -she loved that V-6 power. The first day she had the car, it stranded her with a bad alternator -so she got a brand new lifetime warranty one to go with the car. A month later, the water-pump went out, then the radiator started leaking, and one of the tie-rods lost the rubber bushing in it so the car would shake really badly above 35 MPH. I fixed all of these problems for her, but when she ran it out of gas repeatedly, the new fuel-pump was all on her. A few months after selling this 'prize', I re-bought it after it got crunched from bumper-tagging someone on the highway and driving around until the hood popped open. I fixed it again, new hood, new windshield, new header-panel, new headlights, even a nicer passenger door, and I decided to keep it -thusfar, I had been paid to own this car!

Then I discovered GTUs...

Before my GTU rims were stolen... I miss those wheels! :(

I found a white one for sale for under $400 with stalling problems, but the body was clean and aside from the rough door-panels and badly cracked and peeled dash, the garnet interior was clean. I drove the Z out to tow the car back if needed, but was able to drive the GTU home instead -all I needed to buy was a new battery. I had bought this car to drop a modified L36/L67 hybrid I had helped a friend build for his GA, but the engine had been abandoned with me. I didn't care for the 3800s back then, they were lumbering iron-headed throw-backs in my opinion, holding nothing to the more sophisticated aluminum-headed, splayed-valve 2.8s and 3.1s. Ironically, it had been this engine a couple of years before that inspired me to build the 3400/3.1 hybrid I was working on for my original blue-on-blue turbo 'Retta: I didn't want this supercharged dinosaur to outrun my more modern turbo 3.1...

At one point, I wanted to sell off the Z, it ran great, but I didn't like the auto tranny in it and couldn't find another Muncie five-speed -even if I could find one, I needed it for my poor crippled Turbo 'Retta, who had now also lost fifth and reverse. The 3400/3.1 hybrid was fixed, and now wore block-hugging headers and a brand-new .60-trim T-4 Garrett Airesearch turbochrager, but I hadn't gotten it into the car yet. I got a offer on the Z I decided not to refuse -I got two project cars and a bunch of parts in trade.

Old pic of the car -I'll take some more once the new engine-mounts are done. Unfortunately, the engine has been sitting a long time, and seems to be stuck -hopefully it isn't actually seized :(

One of those projects was the V-8 Indy that had caught my attention years ago, the other was an '86 Fiero GT with a low-mileage 3100 and a bad TH125C -perfect, since I had a four-speed parts-car for it.

After a long and arduous search, I finally ran across a Yellow Indy for sale that I could afford ($800) that was close enough for me to drive to.

The car had some problems, and the interior needed to be stripped and washed, but the engine ran great and had only ~59k miles on it (the car had about 150k). Right around the same time, I was offered my old Z back again, but with a lot of damage to her. All I need to do is go out and bring the car home, but it is now halfway across the country from me, and really isn't driveable in its' current condition. I will try to get the poor car back and fix her up (again), she has had a very rough life. I have all the five-speed stuff to convert that car (unless I use it on my automatic Yellow Indy instead), so that is a big plus for me, but I don't have time to work on that car, and I don't want another broken-down project cluttering my driveway... It will take a while to get things in order, and by then, who knows what the next bend will hold in store for me?

...I would like someday to get a '90 GTZ, preferably with a sunroof, as that is one option I've never managed to get with any of my Berettas. Yes, I think that would round-out my collection, and my Beretta story would have a final chapter to it (though not be complete, of course ). Like any hobby, the more you invest your time in it, the more interesting, the more consuming it becomes. Berettas are more than a hobby for me though -I drive them too, they are actual tools for me, not just toys. Every day I work on one, or drive one, they regain my interest all over again, and so my Beretta story continues...

[tvc3-gtz]

double posted? idk why

[tvc3-gtz]

My father had a 1988 GT 5 speed maroon. That was the first car I had father son bonding time with him. Brakes, oil changes, at 4 yr old. Oh and of course sitting on hip lap and "driving" around the driveway!! My first car was a 1989 Beretta GT with a digi dash. It lost oil pressure and blew up. My second Beretta was a 1990 Beretta Indy, beat to hell, but never let me down. Had to junk it at 230k.. still ran too. Last, but definitely not least was my GTZ. That thing was my baby. I am still saddened that it is gone, but it went to a great kid + his father and they have the space and means to fix all the issues it had.

I ended up scoring a very nice foreign sports car on a lucky trade on craigslist, but I will never forget my roots as a Beretta fanatic. I still quietly frequent this forum, waiting for the time in my life where space and money aren't issues anymore. I love Berettas, the way they handle, the sleek look. I aim to get back into a v6 Beretta. I loved the quad four, but the dependability of those v6's were unprecedented.

For those who haven't heard from me in a while, I apologize. The only thing I have left from my GTZ is the red gas cap I have used in every Beretta I have owned. lol. The kid who bought the GTZ from me is supposed to be joining this forum.

Oh, and back to why I love Beretta's they are unique, they are fun, I grew up on them, I will always love em!