Former Camaro owner mourns end of an era

By Nicholas K. Geranios

Associated Press

SPOKANE – The sad news just reached me. This year’s Chevrolet Camaro will be the last one. After the 2002 model, it’s going out of production.

Having reached its heyday in the disco days of the 1970s, the General Motors muscle car is selling poorly in the era of SUVs and sensible imports. More than 4 million Camaros have been made since the first in 1967, peaking in 1978 at 260,201. Last year, however, sales dwindled to 42,131.

Ah, well. When I think of what I did with that car and what that car did for me, the memories come back like clips of favorite old movies.

In 1978, while still in college, I plunked down $6,000 for a brand-new 1979 Camaro Z-28. The metallic blue beauty with its black t-tops and rumbling 350-cubic-inch V-8 engine was an ideal match for the open highways of the West.

With the federal 55 mph speed limits just a vague notion in Montana and tickets costing only $5, the 90 miles between Great Falls and Helena could be gobbled up in about an hour.

In the Helena canyon, where Interstate 15 wound through the Rocky Mountains, the Camaro maneuvered like a race car. You could lean into turns high, and drop gradually into the other lane through the curve, with barely any loss of speed.

In the summer months.

Winter was another story. The rear-wheel drive, light back end and powerful engine could be a nightmare on slick roads.

Driving through a blizzard on I-90 from Bismarck, N.D., to Fargo once, my Camaro got caught broadside by a gust of wind that started it into 360-degree spins down the icy freeway. We ended up in deep snow off the shoulder.

But winter traction was hardly why you bought a Camaro.

For this bespectacled English major who worked on the college newspaper and really liked “Star Trek,” the Camaro promised at least a glance from members of the opposite sex. There were some who called it a “babe magnet.”

What woman could resist a junior Burt Reynolds winking roguishly as he spun doughnuts through a parking lot at Montana State University?

Or a slightly less-stylish Richard Gere (remember “American Gigolo?”), rolling to the next rendezvous as Blondie screamed “Call Me!” from the cassette deck?

Unfortunately, with me and the Camaro it was a double feature: “The Fast and the Furious” meets “Dilbert.” Still, the promise was always there.

The twin bucket seats in the front were comfortable, if you didn’t mind reclining a few inches above the pavement while howling down the highway.

The back seat, well … It was two tiny patches of fabric separated by a hard hump. You know all those leering comments about back seats and sports cars? Not this one.

The lack of room didn’t stop five of us from driving four hours from Bozeman, Mont., to Missoula to see Blue Oyster Cult. The guy sitting on the hump had every bump in the road delivered directly to his tailbone. While he recovered, the rest of us enjoyed the concert.

In announcing the end of the Camaro, GM also said this would be the last production year of its platform-mate, the Pontiac Firebird. Now, that’s GOOD news.

In the 1970s, the world could be divided neatly between people who bought the gaudy Firebird, with its cheesy screaming chicken hood decal, and automotive connoisseurs who preferred the understatement, the James Bond-ish threat of menace exemplified by the Camaro.

GM blamed the demise of the vehicles on a 53 percent decline in the sports car market since 1990. The world is now a place of sensible Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords and huge GMC Suburbans and Ford Expeditions.

The Camaro was never a practical car. The muffler rusted off about every six months, for no discernible reason.

There was almost no cargo room. I stuffed the car like a metal sausage as jobs took me from Wyoming to North Dakota, to Chicago and Springfield, Ill., and to Washington state.

The flashy colors and t-top roof panels that lured buyers also lured thieves.

The t-tops, which could be removed and stored in the trunk to make the Camaro a quasi-convertible, were particularly irresistible. During 2 1/2years living in Chicago, my t-tops were stolen six times. Each time, the insurance company sent me to shady-looking garages where used t-tops were stacked in piles. Was I just reclaiming my stolen panels from the fences who’d bought them off the street?

But it wasn’t those inconveniences that cost me my Camaro. It was babies.

My wife, who denies she was first lured by the car, began to look down her nose at the Camaro shortly after our daughter was born in 1986.

Have you ever tried getting a baby carrier in and out of the back seat of a Camaro? We struggled for a year, but when she became pregnant with child No. 2, the Camaro’s days were numbered.

By then we were living in Yakima, where I was on the road frequently as a correspondent for The Associated Press.

The Camaro was a decade old. It had more than 100,000 miles. The paint was dinged up. There were rust spots. The driver’s side door was off-kilter and difficult to close. And those cool t-tops? They leaked.

In my newspaper ad, I asked $5,000 for the car.

I got a few looks, but no offers. After a couple of months, a used-car dealer showed up one day and put 18 $100 bills on the kitchen table.

I cleaned out the trunk, where I had stored the old license plates – Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Illinois. I took off the cross my mother had insisted on hanging from the rearview mirror. I handed him the keys.

We took the money and bought a minivan.

Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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