This 1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS may be an icon among 1980s muscle cars, but it has sadly fallen on hard times since leaving the dealership lot. The Monte Carlo may not have been a tire-shredding, high-horsepower beast, but it was one of the more celebrated cars in GM’s lineup at the time. Today, they still have a loyal following, even if values have plateaued a bit over the years. The SS shown here on eBay is a non-runner without much information provided and evidence of prior bodywork attempts. Bidding is at $1,275 with the reserve unmet.

The dealer that is selling this car reminds me of one that I bought a truck from last year. They were your typical buy here, pay here lot with average used cars, but they clearly kept their eyes and ears open for interesting vehicles they might be able to flip. I look at this Monte and I see a vehicle that was sitting in someone’s garage or backyard for years, and then a friend of a friend knew someone with a small used car lot and it ends up here. Who knows the real story, but given how easy it is to get an 80s GM product to run, I’m a little surprised they didn’t attempt to get it to fire up. Bodywork is questionable but I don’t see any major rot.

Ah, the maroon interior – a GM staple of the 1980s. To me, this was always the most disappointing aspect of one of the SS cars, which was that GM didn’t even bother to make the interior look any more sporting or exotic than a regular Monte Carlo. Even Ford was at least putting the Flo-Fit seats in the Mustang GT; surely Chevrolet could have found some racier buckets, a set of white-faced gauges, and maybe a Hurst shifter to give buyers the impression they owned a car just barely removed from the speedway at Daytona. At least the Aero Coupe stood out for that novel rear glass panel.

The car, overall, is in need of detailing, and possibly a full-body respray. For a car located in Pennsylvania, it doesn’t look bad up top, but you really need to get underneath this SS project car. I own a vehicle from Pennsylvania, and let me tell you – it sat for a number of years and is far from pretty underneath. The metal surfaces under the hood show plenty of signs of surface rust, so even though the bid price is cheap, I’d want to lay hands on this car before taking the plunge. It always hurts to see a special car down on its luck, so hopefully this Monte Carlo SS can be saved.