Greetings everyone. I've been perusing these this forum for couple months now due to the search engine leading me to some good advice here. I've seen some amazing pics on here of 1LEs and ZL1s. (Tbone's panther Camaro was crazy good.) Therefore, since thid group are fans of Camaro I wanted to share my story with you.
As a teen in the late 90s, I fell in love with the 4th gen Caramo. It's looks, power, and attainabilty made it attractive to my young mind. I recall playing Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2 and driving Camaros around the track just to enjoy seeing them.
After high-school, I enlisted in the US Marine Corp. Anyone familiar with military bases in the '00s knows that Mustangs, Firebirds, and Camaros abound, a long with big trucks, of course.
Long story short, I purchased my first vehicle from a fellow Marine, a sleek forest green '97 SS with a V8, black wheels, blackout taillights, and T-tops. The car was amazing and, due a change of station, I fortunate enough to drive that car from coast to coast, Washington DC to Twentynine Palms, CA and later Camp Pendleton. I went way too fast across Arizona and New Mexico.
I loved that car, even if did like to eat starters and leaked oil. It was the car I took my future wife on dates with and later took on our honeymoon.
Four years after I purchased the '97 Camaro, my wife was pregnant with our son in the middle of a Wisconsin winter. I was out of the military and attending University. We had little money. The Camaro was parked in a rundown garage and we were using my wife's Ford Taurus for transportation during the winter, but it had some issues, namely worn out breaks. With the baby only 2 months away, we got the breaks fixed, but when she picked up the car, it wouldn't go anywhere in drive. The transmission blew. There we were, in January with just a Camaro for a family vehicle. Needless to say the Camaro was traded in for an Impala.
Ever since the 5th gen Camaro concept was unveiled, we talked about getting one in the future. Fifteen years later, we purchased a 2023 2SS V8 6MT! The vehicle is a dream. The black wheels and smoked out taillights remind me of the '97 SS.
