1987 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible - You Can't Have it All

For years now I've been on an on a semi-serious, on again off again search for a fourth-generation Corvette convertible. I need to be careful because at the rate I'm going I'm bound to find what I'm looking for. Especially this time of the year with some folks bailing out of their old cars before they store them for winter. This 1987 popped up on my Facebook Marketplace feed and it checks several "must have boxes". 

Most important box checked being if I'm ever going to own a C4, it has to be a convertible. And a convertible with the L98 engine and an automatic. Something please go wrong here because otherwise I might find myself in a stressful spot where I have to make a decision. 

It even comes with a set of leather trimmed seats to replace the yucky cloth ones. Another bonus is it's in the town I live in - no need to travel thirty, sixty or ninety minutes just to kick its tires. That's refreshing. Just 50,000 miles on its thirty-five-year-old digital ticket too. Help!  

Oh, but you know me. I'll always find something wrong enough for me not to pull the trigger and the big one here is the poster of the ad has this listed for $14,000. Can't fault them for asking that much but I'd chafe at forking over half that for this. If this was listed for five-grand I'd really be in a pickle. I'm also not crazy about the color but I could live with this for the right price. And fourteen-grand is far from the right price. NADA pegs this average retail at $8,750, high retail $16,300 so they no doubt think they'd be cutting someone a deal. 

Fourth-generation Corvette's debuted in the spring of 1983 as 1984's, due to delays there was no official 1983 Corvette, and while they were a stylized updating of the swoopy, shark-body third-generation Corvette, underneath they were a remarkable, dare I said near watershed updating of the Corvette just about everywhere else. 

Except the engine and automatic transmission. For 1984 and 1985, C4's carried over the infamous 205-horsepower, L83, "Cross Fire Injection" V-8 engine. The 700R4, four-speed automatic carried over as well and was used through 1996. The 700R4, essentially a four-speed version of the GM Turbo Hydramatic 400, was renamed 4L60 in 1990. 

Our neighborly subject here, again, has the more powerful, L98 that made 230-horsepower. While certainly no powerhouse in the modern sense, it has enough torque down low where I like it to make things interesting. Even with the 700R4. By the way, I'd avoid any C4 with a manual made before 1989 unless you enjoy manuals that are unnecessarily complicated to operate and challenging to repair. Those fuss buckets are known as the Doug Nash 4+3 manual. 

C4's, made from 1984 through 1996 and incrementally improved upon over the years, are a star-crossed lot. They don't command the money that early C3's do and even some later C3's that are original and unrestored get more love. Million reasons for that too ranging from the obvious to the nuanced; you either understand why one model year of a car, regardless of whether it's a Corvette or not, is worth more than another or you don't. 

Go to any car show and the C4's might as well be stuck out in the parking lot. Meanwhile the junkiest of C3's get fawned all over like an aging Super Bowl hero. My 25-year-old, fairly car savvy son is all about my 1977 Corvette and wants nothing to do with C4's; no matter how hard I try to convince him that they're pretty sweet performers.  

It boils down to what you prioritize in your weekend toy - engine power or handling prowess. Or just simple to-die-for good looks. And, sorry, life isn't fair. You can't have it all. Unless you're willing to pay for it. 

I was all of twenty-years-old when GM dropped the "new" Corvette, and at first, I was delighted that GM had finally done a complete do over on it. Styling was evolutionary, it was certainly no earth mover like the second-generation to third-generation Corvette was, I 've always found the fixed roof C4's had too much 1978-1982 fastback in them for my taste. The convertibles, which were launched starting in 1986, cured most of those ills. In fairness, fastback styling is generally not my thing too. 

Top up or down, these are cool cars. The fact they can pull g's like a Porsche and are really affordable makes them quite the bargain if you ask me. 

This one, is not bargain. And for that I'm kind of grateful. But like I said, if I try hard enough, I know I can find one right in the sweet spot of what I'm looking for. Thing is, I need to stop looking. 

 

1990 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible - Not "The Gotta Have It" it Needed to Be

 

Like I mentioned in my soliloquy about a 1986 fourth generation Corvette last November, I like C4 convertibles. I like them a lot. So much so that I've put myself on a quasi-serious on-and-off search to find one. To that end, I found this 1990 last week for sale down in Akron. Just 39,000 miles on its thirty-two-year-old digital ticker and what I deduced was a more than reasonable asking price of $13,995. My wife agreed to come along for a looksee south to kick its tires. I promised a round on the links afterwards so that helped convince her. 

I was a taken back by her reaction to old red here; she was smitten. Big time. So much so that she mouthed silently to me, "I want this" as we sauntered around it.  She added that she liked this better "than our car" referring to our 1977 Corvette that we've had for ten-years now. 

I liked it too although I stop short of saying I like it better than our '77. C4's aren't everyone's cup of tea and I'm not the biggest fan of them either but there is something about the convertibles that's very "Hollywood". Throw in ones that have the optional and very expensive removable hard top, like this one has, and you've got a cross between Scarlett Johanson and Sophia Vergara. They're still no C2 or C3 convertible, but the removable or droppable roof does whittle away most of the design sins of C4's. 

Chevrolet built these fourth generation Corvettes from 1984 through 1996 incrementally improving them every two to three years or so. Convertibles came along starting in 1986. For 1990, the dashboard was redesigned, and the driver's steering wheel now had an airbag. 1990 Corvette's also benefitted from the 5.7-liter, 240-horsepower V-8 engine, code-named "L98", that replaced the dubious "Cross Fire Injection" engine of 1982-1985 infamy. And the L98, while less powerful than the "LT1" engine sold in Corvettes from 1992-1996, was less problematic too. 

Somewhat ironic then that what made our test drive less than earth moving was the L98 had a very noticeable misfire. So much so that it muted a considerable amount of the engine's performance. I could tell the engine still had some serious poke, but it's hard to tell how much gusto the engine actually had. 

While this car wasn't nearly the disappointment that '86 last fall was, after a fairly long test drive, my takeaway was more "meh" than "I must have this thing". And the culprit for my ambivalence had more to do than a phlegmy, out of tune engine. A lot of my sentiment stems from that after my rebuilding of the front and rear suspension on our '77, it rides like new now. Sure, this car handled better, actually much, much better, but not to the point it made our '77 weak-kneed in comparison. Well, on the street at least. On a track it would be a different story but who takes their car on a track anyway? The brakes didn't grab with the tenacity that our '77's do either. They worked fine in Caprice or Impala kind of way but they didn't have the kind of herculean grab I would expect.

We thanked our salesman for his time and for him to give me call when the engine's tuned up so I can take it for another spin. Even if I found it flawless, I wasn't about to say, "shit, I'll take it"! Part of me was thankful the car was somewhat of disappointment; it not only made my getting out of the dealership easy, I also don't have to be concerned about making a decision or divorcing ourselves from our '77. 

On the way back north for a round of golf my wife said, appropriately, that with regards to taking a C4 convertible for a serious spin, "I got it out of my system". She was so right. I still want a "C4 convertible", but this pretty red head didn't make me want to rush into anything. Despite what Covid has done to the used car market, $15,000 is still $15,000 and that along with the little things here and there didn't make it the "gotta have it" it needed to be. 

1986 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z - Haters Gonna Hate

Holy college days flashback, Batman. I had no idea what the "International Race of Champions" or "IROC" was before Chevrolet came out with these cars in 1985. This one here is an '86. Not that I was ever into auto-racing, but "IROC" (eye-rock) sounded fairly intriguing and the graphics used on the side of the cars looked such as well. An "IROC" either enhanced your appreciation of the Camaro ethos or perpetuated any pre-conceived notions you had of them. Up to and including stereotypes. Haters gonna hate. 

If the IROC-Z had any flaw, above, frankly, issues inherent to third-generation Camaro's, it that it was not as "fast" as the car it supposedly was marketed directly against, Ford's Mustang GT. It wasn't much slower (more like "not-fast") but the automobile rags consistently found the little Fox body Mustang quicker zero-to-sixty and in the quarter mile and with a higher top-speed than a third-gen Camaro. 

When Chevrolet came out with the IROC-Z for 1985 with an available 5.0-liter engine with then state-of-the-art "Tuned Port Fuel Injection" (TPI), pulsating with all of two-hundred and fifteen net horsepower and two-hundred seventy-five foot-pounds of torque, they must have thought they would finally corral Ford's pony. However, saddled with an automatic (a manual stout enough to handle the torque allegedly wouldn't fit) and those son-of-a-gun's in Dearborn found even more juice in the last go 'round of their venerated and carburated 5.0 (actually it was a 4.9), the IROC-Z finished in second-place in a two-horse town. Curses! For 1986, 5.0-liter IROC's, like our subject, couldn't catch any Mustang 5.0 (with a manual or automatic) with Ford's new-for-'86 port-fuel injection system either. Double-drat. 

Begs the question why Ford was able to have a stick-shift in their Mustang in an engine making three-hundred pounds of torque while GM didn't on the Camaro. Adding insult to injury, the Mustang was depicted as a better daily driver thanks to a superior driving position, somewhat better seats and more pliable suspension tuning. It also had a larger back seat. Not that it mattered to someone like me at the time putting themselves through college on two and sometimes three minimum wage jobs; I couldn't get anywhere near either one of them. But given a choice, blindly so, throw me the keys to an IROC-Z and let me see for myself just how horrible it would have been to live with day-to-day as my sole means of transportation. 

Probably the single biggest reason why the "third-generation" Camaro was slower than a Ford Mustang was it was some three-hundred pounds heavier. And to compensate for that extra bulk, finally, and what was supposed to be for model year 1986 but for a number of reasons had to wait until 1987, Chevrolet dropped a slightly de-tuned version of the mighty L98 Corvette engine into the IROC-Z and, at last, the IROC-Z (with an automatic) beat a Mustang where it mattered most. Well, mattered most to the stuffed-suits at GM and Chevrolet; I'd buy a Camaro over a Mustang no matter if it was slower to sixty miles-per-hour by a month. It's not like a Corvette powered IROC-Z sucked the doors off a 5.0-liter Mustang (with a manual) either but if 6.1 seconds zero-to-sixty compared to 6.2, and a half second faster in the quarter mile was really "faster", well, whom am I to judge. 

Now, you could get an IROC-Z or a Z28 back then with a stick-shift but you couldn't get the stick with either the Tuned-Port 5.0 (LB9) or the honkin' L98 Corvette 5.7. The carburated L69 "High Output" 5.0-liter "Chevy" making one-hundred ninety horses in Camaro tune (one-hundred and eighty in a Monte Carlo SS) was the motor you wanted if you had to have a stick in your Z; it made only two-hundred forty foot-pounds of torque. Probably as a way to boost Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) numbers, a Z28 was available with Chevrolet's one-hundred fifty-five horsepower LG4 5.0-liter as well. Funny, you'd think those would be pretty hard to find these days but most manual-transmission Z28's of this era I find have LG4's in them. IROC-Z' were available only with a high-performance engine. 

Our fairly well-worn red-head here also highlights an interesting trend in '80's collectibles, as if there are that many, but Camaro's of the era are going for more than Corvette's are. For example, this one here is listed on Facebook Marketplace for, are you sitting down? $8,000. If you're diligent, you can get a nice earlier (pre-'92) C3 for that money.  

There are a number of reasons for that, none of which make real sense. I'll speculate and hypothesize on that in a future soliloquy hopefully by the end of the year. In the meantime, enjoy this Z and comment below if you'd like me to hook you up. Something tells me the owner would love to hear from you. Merry Christmas.