(By Eric Rood) – Behold, the world’s nicest 20-second Chevy Camaro! What a strange part of automotive history were the years of the early 1980’s, a time where the bloated Malaise Era melded into the era of wedges and poster cars. General Motors throwing the boat anchor Iron Duke 2.5-liter four-cylinder (known also as the Pontiac 2.5, Pontiac 151, and Tech 4 ) into the F-Body remains one of the tragic consequences of this puzzling time. The only thing worse than a 90-horsepower Camaro was a 90-horsepower Camaro with an automatic transmission to sap that power even further.
As with any base model sports car, General Motors sold a healthy allocation of both the Camaro and Firebird with the wheezing 2.5-liter engine, but they’ve become pretty rare these days. This can almost certainly traced back to the Iron Duke’s inevitable head gasket problems. Of course, a bad engine or even a head-gasket replacement was reason enough for many a hot rodder in the intervening 30 years—since GM wisened up and stopped building four-cylinder Camaros—to throw the old Tech IV into the scrap heap and throw a ubiquitous Small-Block Chevy in its place.
That’s what makes this Camaro on Long Island pretty unique. Not only does it retain the old four-cylinder engine (with a bitchin’ red air cleaner, we might point out), it also looks like it’s been well cared-for. The paint looks good and the interior appears clean, down to the sweet skinny-spoke steering wheel and flush-fit door handles. Being a base model, there’s no cassette deck so we can’t joke about a Def Leppard tape being stuck in it, but it’s otherwise ready to transport you at a leisurely pace back to the time when David Lee Roth was in Van Halen and the Ghostbusters had a movie on the big screen.
Click here for the ad featuring this Iron Duke Powered Camaro
I’m not sure which fact surprises me more…..that GM actually built a Camaro/Firebird with the 4 cyllinder lump under the hood, or that there were actually people that plopped down their hard earned dollars for one of these sloth like units………
Someone should take these cars and swap in that new Turbo 2.0L I-4 engine & trans that they’re putting in the new Camaro!
Some people bought these Camaros for their looks and for transportation purposes… and the 4-banger was sufficient… good to about 90 MPH…
Teaching the kids to drive you can walk alongside giving instructions.
I tought the 2.8 v6 was stupidly small , but an iron duke ?Seriously ??What the?? 0.000001 HP per pound .
I had almost forgot that the rear spoiler was an option on third generation Camaros. That fan shroud looks more like a tunnel!
I saw a low mile Firebird 3rd gen.with the same crap engine for cheap. PASS!
Had a buddy owned one of these in the ’90s. Had the 4 speed manual, we swapped it for a 350 and a saginaw. Nothing fancy, but without all the ground effects and extra crap it weighed 3150 lbs and ran pretty well.
This dealer is located in a part of NYC that got the worst of the flooding from hurricane Sandy, so prospective buyers should examine this one closely.
I have a fascination with faux fast cars with puny engines. I wonder what kind of tuning go-fast goodies exist for the Iron Duke?