At $13,500, Is This 1982 Chevy Camaro Z28 a Bitchin’ Deal?
The seller of today’s Nice Price or No Dice Z28 says he bought it for his wife as a birthday present, but that she wanted something newer and more topless. Let’s see if her loss could be someone else’s gain.
A popular pastime for many people is to look at some current state of affairs and with a wave of a hand at the implied malfeasance, derisively declare that “this is why we can’t have nice things.” The thing is though; I actually think we can have nice things. As proof of this, it seems that yesterday’s 1995 Toyota Camry LE wagon is still kicking around and it was pretty nice. At $7,700, it wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to nick that niceness, either. At least that seemed to be the opinion of the 65 percent of you who awarded the Camry a Nice Price win.
Speaking of wins, you might think that Ford’s Mustang is the undisputed champion of pony car sales. Hell; the entire category is even named after the model, after all. In the aggregate, that is true; the Mustang has outsold even its closest competitor, the Chevy Camaro.
Of course, Ford had a two-year head start on Chevy and there was a point in the first decade of this century when Chevy just threw up its metaphorical hands and gave up on the Camaro entirely for a number of years.
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Still, there were a few individual years there when the Camaro managed to eke out more sales than Ford’s pony. This 1982 Camaro Z28 comes from one of those years when Chevy’s pony took the crown. That year, Chevy moved 189,747 Camaros into enthusiasts’ garages while Ford only managed 130,418 in Mustang sales.
The reason behind the big leap over the competition is obvious when you look at this car. 1982 was the first model year of the newly redesigned third-generation Camaro and the model was warmly received by both the motoring press and mullet wearers everywhere. Okay, that last bit was a cheap shot, but any article written about a Camaro must have at least one mullet reference. It’s the law.
This generation of Camaro was the first with a hatchback body, the first to offer fuel-injected engines, and the first with (gulp) a four-cylinder option.
Luckily, this is a Z28 and that package was not offered with the Iron Puke four-pot. Instead, this car sports the 4BBL-equipped 305 V8. In this model year, that 5.0-liter managed 145 horsepower. A “Cross Fire Injection” version of the engine was available as an option, offering 165 horses, but that can be kind of a nightmare to maintain so it may be worth giving up the 20 ponies here.
That engine is mated to a three-speed TH200 automatic and drives a live axle in the back in traditional Camaro fashion.
While the carbureted V8 may have been the standard fare for the Z28, this car apparently had lots of other option boxes checked. According to the ad, it has the updated Lear Siegler bucket seats, a positraction rear end, T-tops, and—get this—an AM/FM/8-track stereo. Who knew that 8-tracks were still a thing in 1982?
According to the ad, the car is in excellent condition and sports a mere 75,000 miles on the clock. The exterior looks to be in great shape and the seller offers that it may have been resprayed at one time in the past. The factory wheels show no curb rash, but do evidence markings from previous balance weight mountings. All the trim and badging appears intact and the CarFax report the seller provides shows no history of accidents. The title, it seems, is clean as well.
The interior is likewise very nice with two-tone cloth upholstery and one of the heaviest brows any dashboard has ever sported. Another unique feature of the dash is an odd double-needle speedometer that reads MPH up one side and km/h down the other. Almost as amazing are the tons of non-functional Torx-head bolts that are peppering the dash.
As I noted, the car was originally a birthday gift for the seller’s wife, but she decided on something else so now it’s up for grabs. Perhaps it would make a fine present for someone else? To make it so, someone is going to need to come up with the $13,500 asking or something close to that since the seller has thrown in an OBO for good measure. What do you think, is this clean Camaro a good deal at that amount? Or, does that price put you on the wife’s side of the argument?
You decide!
Central Michigan Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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