Sometime around 2006, I got a chance to drive the Camaro concept car, the one that presaged the mullet-mobile’s triumphant return for a fifth generation. I thought it would be fun to show up at GM’s proving grounds in a 1985 IROC-Z, which was my first car. GM helped track down a pristine IROC, a 5.0 TPI with the four-speed automatic transmission, just like mine. This was as nice an ’85 as you could find, babied by a hardcore Camaro nut, but the first time I pulled into traffic, the transmission shifted so hard that it chirped the tires on the 1-2 upshift. Mine used to do that, too—to the extent that I needed transmission mounts about as regularly as oil changes. I always figured there was something wrong with mine. It turns out they all did that.
-I once got pulled over when the shift to second kicked the ass end of the car toward the ditch on a wet, off-camber road. I got pulled over another time for doing a burnout out of the school parking lot. Then there was the time I got pulled over by a cop in front of me, because he’d seen the car in the town parking lot the week before, when it needed tires. Since I had since gotten new tires and was cordial to the cop about the whole reverse-pullover thing, he gave me a break the next week when he pulled me over again, for speeding. I got pulled over a lot.
-From the time I bought the IROC from a Catholic priest—vanity plate “CHRISTN”—till the time I sold it to a lobsterman, I covered 30,000 miles. (Everything in Maine is far away.) I drove my Camaro to the New England Young Writer’s Conference in Vermont, where there were lots of angst-ridden goth poets who didn’t understand why I was so upbeat—hey, I’d just driven Route 89 listening to my new Beck cassette in a sweet-ass IROC, an experience to turn any frown upside down. On the way back, I averaged 84 mph. When I got home and popped the hood, I discovered that one plug wire was broken, meaning I’d been scorching through Vermont powered by the rare small-block V-7.
-The 5.0 TPI IROC was rated at 215 horsepower. The later 5.7-liter (350-cubic-inch), detuned Corvette engine, was rated at 230. Tolerances what they were back then, it was entirely possible to find a lively 5.0 that was nipping the heels of the mighty 350, and I think that’s what I had. Anyway, it felt pretty fast to me, and was probably entirely too much car for a 15-year-old with a provisional license, a guy who’d thus far spent most of his wheel time in a Dodge Aries drivers-ed car and thought it was fun to shoot bottle rockets out the window at fellow motorists.
-I always parked the IROC for the winter, but one year I got caught in some early flurries and learned that Goodyear Gatorbacks have the cold-weather friction coefficient of a bobsled runner. I slid off a straight road at 15 mph, the camber of the two-lane sending me slow-motion onto the shoulder. In the dry, the Camaro had fairly high limits, but I never really trusted either the brakes or the handling (I wasn’t all dumb!). The two times I spun it were both in right-angle, first-gear corners. One of those events transpired while leaving my friend Adam’s driveway, and his family saw me turn left at the street and suddenly whip around 180 degrees. I just drove away. “We debated whether you meant to do that,” he later told me.
-The IROC held its own amongst the clapped-out hotrods of the area, Novas, Monte Carlos, and pickup trucks. But I did get memorably smoked by a 964 Porsche 911 cabriolet, an early lesson in power-to-weight ratios. And money.
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- Archived Comparison: 1986 Ford Mustang LX 5.0 vs. Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z
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- Bitchin’ Indeed: A Visual History of the Chevrolet Camaro
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- Chevrolet Camaro Research: Full Pricing, Specs, Reviews, and More on the Current Model
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Speaking of money, I bought the IROC for $3800 and sold it for $2500. That’s, what, four cents per mile for depreciation? Not bad. And while I’ve made fun of the IROC’s image—yes, yes, I Reek Of Cologne—I’ve always thought it’s a great-looking car. I still do. During Car and Driver’s 10Best testing last fall, my morning drive took me past a black IROC for sale on someone’s lawn. I stopped, of course. They wanted way too much money for it—overvaluing their IROC, as it were. I totally understand.
-from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1F4yW8e
via Agya
