The longer I stare at this 1981 Chevrolet Camaro Z28, the more I feel like it’s promising project material, and for a couple of different reasons. I’m not really talking about a comprehensive restoration here, but this one seems like it might make a good father/son (or daddy/daughter) undertaking, with the hopes of just having a nice driver when all is completed. While there’s plenty of work to be done, most of it doesn’t appear overly complex, plus the cost of $8,000 isn’t going to break the bank either. If you’re seeing the same potential, this one can be found here on Craigslist in Campbell Hall, New York, and our thanks go out to reader Tony Primo for finding this cool Chevy and sending us the tip!
Some of the bodywork has been started, and fortunately, it doesn’t appear that the sheet metal was very bad to begin with. There’s still some corrosion on the passenger side door to be repaired, but it seems fairly minor, plus a lot of sanding has already taken place outside. Another positive is that most of the removed trim is still present, so hopefully, these pieces will still be in good enough condition to reuse. The wheels and tires are also new, but the factory components are also included in the sale.
The majority of the tasks to be performed here are likely related to the exterior, as the seller claims that the engine is running well, and it has recently received new plugs, wires, and a distributor cap. Hopefully, plenty of life remains in the V8 for the next owner to enjoy, and another positive is the transmission. This one’s got a 4-speed manual with a fresh clutch in place, with additional good news being that the underside also appears reasonably solid. A bit of rust can be found on the trunk pan, but the floors seem to be sound.
If it’s just a driver you’re after, the interior may be satisfactory without doing anything. The seats appear to be in nice shape overall, and replacing just the carpet might work magic for the appearance inside. While this one has the potential to be a real beauty with some extensive work all around, it doesn’t seem all that far away from being ready to just paint and enjoy after some bodywork is completed. The latter is the direction I’m feeling going in here- how would you move forward with this 1981 Chevrolet Camaro Z28?
Aluminum slots, Check. 4speed, Check. Good color combo, Check.That looks like a good car and a very fair price.
4-gear, smogger V-8, disco Camaro. Love it!
I agree, great project, but maybe at 5K. Great that it has the manual, but by ’81, that meant getting the 165HP 305.
I bought a 1980 Malibu sedan, brand new in 1980. I initially ‘ordered’ a 1980 Malibu with 305 V8 and a 4 speed. But after waiting three months, the dealership called to say that the car was never built because, “GENERAL MOTOR RAN OUT OF OF 4 SPEEDS”. I then started a search of many of the Chevrolet dealerships in northern New Jersey looking for a V8 Malibu. I finally found one that was equipped with the 267 C.I. small block and a 3 speed automatic, but no A/C. Well I drove that car for a year and finally decided to trade it in. That car was equipped with the ‘LOCKUP TORQUE CONVERTER’ and at highway speeds between 50 & 70 MPH, the converter would lockup and unlock to the point where I would start to feel SEASICK as it the car rocked back and forth, almost like the way a car feels when its running out of gas or it’s ignition system is startling to fail. And I know it wasn’t just my Malibu.The company that repaired the computer system where I worked issued 1979 & 1980 Malibu’s to the technicians for their service calls and all those technicians said the same thing. The cars would make them feel seasick as the converters would lockup and unlock. So after three or four trips to the dealer, who never were able to ‘FIX THE PROBLEM’, I traded that Malibu in for a brand new 1981 Camaro, a 305, 4 bbl, 4 speed car and that Camaro turned out to be an even bigger piece of junk then the Malibu. It ate a camshaft after about 15,000 miles, the paint peeled off large parts of the hood within a year, the rotors warped after about 30,000 miles and on and on. Sadly those two Chevrolet’s turned out to be the last two NEW American cars I ever owned. I resisted for years, buying a Japanese car, but in the last 45 years my wife and I purchased 4 different Toyota’s that all gave long, trouble free service. I have a 2002 Camry V6 that admittedly has always been garage kept, never driven in the rain or snow and has never really been used as a “DALY DRIVER’ and only has about 68,000 miles on it. But it still drives, rides and looks like it’s new.
Robert, what paint color was your ’81 Camaro? I was going to order a dark blue metallic, but the salesman said not to order it, that the paint goes bad on them quickly. SO, they even knew that at least that one color went bad. I ordered a black one instead.
Sure enough, a year or so later, I had the car back in the dealership for a new catalytic converter, and there was a customer waiting to pick up her already repainted dark blue metallic Camaro.
I wish I knew how to post photos to these BARN FIND posts because somewhere, I have photos of the ‘hood’ of that Camaro that the paint just peeled off. But my car was a ‘middle blue’ meaning not a ‘dark blue metallic’ like you wanted to order, but it wasn’t a really ‘light sky blue’ either, sort of in between. Oh yea I make an error when I said that that 1980 Malibu & 1981 Camaro were the last two American cars I ever owned because in 1984, my wife’s second car after she learned how to drive was a brand new 1984 Chevette (her first was a used 1974 Gremlin). Well that Chevette gave 10 years of trouble free service as her daily driver. We then purchased a used,1 year old 1994 Plymouth Sundance followed by the 2002 Toyota Camry. But for whatever the reasons, my wife never drove the Camry as she continued to use Sundance until 2010 when we bought a brand new Toyota Corolla which still ran good as late as 2023. We would still have that car except my wife got ‘rear ended’ and the insurance company ‘TOTALLED’ the car. The after experiencing severe ‘STICKER SHOCK’ while looking for a new car after the 2010 Corolla got hit, I found a used 2016 Corolla that only had 24,000 miles on it, which so far has given us ZERO problems. Oh yeah, aside from the 2002 Camry and the 2016 Corolla, I also have as my daily driver, a 1994 Chevy S-10 pickup, a 4 cylinder 5 speed stick that I bought from my sister after her husband George (who bought the truck brand new in 1994) passed away in 2007. And then there’s my 1969 AMC Hurst SC/Rambler. But an interesting little side story is that my brother-in-law who passed away, was a CPA with his own accounting firm. But he was a avid gardener and had about 20 acres of land in Cream Ridge in central New Jersey. And George also had a 1955 Chevy 3100 pickup, a 235 C.I. OHV 6 cylinder/3 speed stick that I used to call “George’s Farm Truck’. Well one day in 1994, the 55 Chevy stopped running and instead of junking the truck, my sister & her husband just pushed the it behind their garage where it sat uncovered for the next 13 years. Then George went out and bought the S-10 brand new. Well after George tragically passed away in 2007, I bought the S-10 from my sister (which only had 12,000 miles on it) for a mere $1,000.00. But my sister ‘GAVE’ the 55 Chevy pickup to my nephew Bill for ‘FREE’, provided Bill quit smoking (which he did-George sadly passed away from Lung Cancer). And then in the fall of 2007 Bill and my other nephew Brendan went down to Cream Ridge with a new battery, points, rotor, distributor cap and ignition wires and then after draining the gas and installing all the ignition parts, after a few tries, the 55 Chevy came back to life and still runs nice to this day.
That Malibu would have been better off with a powerglide. lol Wasn’t there a way to disable the lockup – or to rig a way to manually engage it & keep it on?
My ’74 firebird has 250k miles on it, original heavy thick front brake rotors still on it with a lot of city cruising on them at nite from back in the day, orig turbo 400 trans, & orig pont 400 motor – except for timing chain. I made sure to never drive it or park it in bad weather or the hot sun.The buccaneer red paint is still shiny.