Greetings all,
My name is Matt - I am 29 years old and a first time Camaro owner. I was in the Army National Guard for 8 years, and I attended Arizona State University while I was serving in the military. I graduated from ASU with my MBA in 2010. I work in the construction industry as a Project Engineer. I've been married for almost 7 years, and my wife and I are expecting a baby girl (our first) in March of 2014.
I purchased my 2013 Ashen Gray Camaro 2SS/RS in August of 2013. I have owned the car for 3 months, but have only had it in my garage for a month of that time.
Here's the story of my new ride (so far): My neighbor is an exec with GM and helped me find this diamond in the rough. The car had been sitting on a dealer lot for almost a year - the car had some issues with the clear coat (looked like paint imperfections), which is why nobody purchased it in that time. After about 6 hours in the hot seat and going through the salesman, sales manager, and general manager at the dealership - using my neighbor's family and friend's discount, and all the military rebates - I was able to reduce the price of this $40,000 car to $34,000+TT&L. Within that price I also had the dealer throw in the heritage grille, and a wet sand on the entire car to get the paint finish issues resolved. The car also came with free life time oil changes at the dealer (for being a veteran) and nitrogen in my tires for life. Dealer tint was also included at no additional charge. I had the car for a couple of days then had to take it back in to the dealership to get the wet sand done, which took a month. The car looked perfect when I got it back - No paint imperfections. I got the car back, drove it stock for about a month and decided it was time to start all of the mods that I had planned for. I took it over to Loud Pedal Motorsports in Tempe, AZ and they worked on the car for about a month. They performed the following work:
- New rims installed (the rims are the same style as the ZL1 carbon edition, but don't have the ZL1 logo on them (the car is an SS after all).
- Brake calipers and Sparks SS badges painted ZR1 Blue and installed (I just really like that look of blue accents)
- Hydro-dipped interior trim (including MyLink surround)
- Hurst Auto Shifter Plate
- Plasti-dipped the rear tail light bezels myself
Obviously, this car is not my daily driver, so not having it for that time wasn't that big of a deal.
During the time I was waiting on my Camaro to finish being worked on I lurked around these forums for a few months getting a lot of great advice from the members here on Camaro5. There are so many knowledgeable people here and I am glad that I found this place. After all my lurking on here, I finally have my car back from getting some much needed mods and am ready to post the first pics of my new love. I will post some more pics of the beast once it stops raining. The ones I took last night are pretty dark.
Here's to many happy years with Camaro 5!!!
