Seeing the presence of a 1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo on our Barn Finds assignments board, my mind went right to the 1970s Montes. I’ve always wanted one, and I found myself briefly confused when the SS of the 1980s popped up on my screen. “Oh yeah,” I quickly corrected my mistaken thoughts, “A 1986 Monte isn’t a 70’s model, but it is a nearly 40-year-old car!” No wonder this one looks so needy. But maybe this is just the project for you. If you think so, check out the car here on ebay, and get ready to drop upwards of $4,000, which is where the bidding now sits. You’ll then have to find a way to get to Frenchtown, NJ to arrange shipping.

What will you be getting? A classic body style that only got better in looks as it lived on from its introduction in 1970, though most enthusiasts would insist that that wasn’t necessarily the case when the nameplate moved to a front-wheel-drive configuration late in its lifecycle. The car in question here represents the SS RWD version that lived from 1983-88 and which was then replaced with what Hagerty called “the lame front-wheel drive Lumina in 1989.” Lame indeed, but that’s not the point here. The focus, rather, is on the long and low body, the menacing hood, the tiny decklid spoiler, and that SS decals adorning various surfaces. And if you’re an old-school NASCAR fan, you can also revel in the fact that this car is close to what its namesake was at Daytona and other such temples of speed, more so than today’s sticker-job “stock” cars.

Though the ad says the car is rust-free, it’s clearly not so on the underside. If you can dismiss surface rust, however, can you similarly say that you have no concerns about the bottom of the passenger door, which appears to have the typical signs of road salt’s insidious damage? Even if so, this paint looks like it would be hard to salvage, so factor in the cost of a spray job and new set of decals.

There are some other worrying signs. First, the car has sat for a decade, and it needs a starter, which may be a convenient way of suggesting that it’s not going to be a matter of putting in some fresh gas and trying to get it to fire. Once you do get it home, you’ve also got to figure out if the listed 124,000 miles were hard ones. A GM 5.0-liter engine, in my experience, is hard to kill. But you’re going to have to have a look at the internals to know whether a rebuild is in order. Aside from that, there’s little revealed about the fitness for use of this 80s-era muscle car. Balancing some of the negatives is the fact that the car comes with original paperwork, always a bonus. Check out the sales contract—what would you do if today’s new-car buy came at a 17% interest rate? Drive what you’ve got, I suspect, or throw a few thousand down for a car you can resurrect from its current mildly decrepit condition.