The last Camaro—a six-speed ZL1 1LE—rolled out of Chevrolet’s Lansing, Michigan factory last December and the company has yet to even announce a potential successor. Chevy dealer lots are devoid of the iconic pony car for the first time in fifteen years. With Camaro production firmly in the rear-view mirror, now is a good time to dissect the cultural impact of the bowtied pony car.
Where to begin? It lived a full life with lots of highlights to reminisce on. That final ZL1 1LE—with a Goliath-hunting 7:16.04 ‘Ring lap time—certainly qualifies as an all-time great. The late-aughts reintroduction of the Camaro—and the Michael Bay Transformers tie-in with the bright-yellow Bumblebee—is memorable. The original ‘67-69 Z/28, built at the height of the muscle-car wars, stands out.
This right here, though—a fully loaded five-speed manual 1988 IROC-Z—is an indisputable first-ballot hall-of-famer. It is not the fastest or most-refined Camaro, but it is the most bitchin’, and that’s what the Camaro will be remembered for in decades to come.
| Quick Specs | 1988 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z |
| Engine | 5.0-Liter V-8 |
| Output | 220 Horsepower / 290 Pound-Feet |
| Efficiency | 15 City / 23 Highway / 17 Combined |
| Base Price (1988) | $13,490 |
| On-Sale Date | Now (Craigslist) |
Although the second-generation Camaro—introduced in 1970—enjoyed relatively strong sales, it had lost its performance-car sheen as the malaise era progressed. At the end of its lifespan, the Z/28 package model weighed 3,600 pounds and wheezed just 165 horsepower from its V-8. Contemporary reviews found it outdated and impractical at the time of its discontinuation in 1981. The third generation, introduced in 1982, therefore had to breathe new life into the Camaro name. GM engineers went all out: the third-gen Camaro shed 250 pounds, added fuel injection, offered a five-speed manual, and used the latest in glass manufacturing tech to give it a truly modern silhouette. It debuted to high praise.
In 1985, Chevrolet offered a new trim package on the third-gen: the IROC-Z. Named for the International Race of Champions, an all-star one-make stock-car racing series primarily run on banked ovals, the IROC-Z was explicitly the highest-performance, best-handling Camaro ever built. It had wider wheels, thicker tires, and rode on lowered, specially-valved shocks. It had frame bracing and thicker sway bars. It was offered with the latest in General Motors’ fuel-injection tech, known as Tuned Port Injection (TPI), and it was the first Camaro to crack the 200-horsepower mark since the malaise era over a decade earlier.
Chevrolet was pretty explicit in its advertisements: You wanna drive a race car? Here you go.
The IROC-Z was a massive hit. By the time this 1988 model hit showrooms, Chevy dropped the mid-level Z28 Camaro trim and replaced it with the IROC-Z, thanks to its popularity. Although a 350 cubic-inch V-8 was offered in the IROC, this car's 305 cubic-inch engine was the only one offered with the manual transmission, and it only had ten fewer horsepower than the 45-cubic-inch larger engine. This one right here was the spec to get—so much so that this fully loaded example started its life as a dealership demonstrator.
The manual is the right choice because the T5 gearbox feels shockingly good for a car of this era; Throws are long, but the lever finds the gates easily, and you can toss it through gears quickly. The 305-cubic-inch V-8 (here complemented with a pair of glasspack Magnaflow mufflers, as the good Lord intended) may not be a heavy hitter by modern standards, but all 290 pound-feet of torque are available from, essentially, idle rpm. While Tuned Port Injection isn’t quite as polished as a modern EFI setup in low-speed driving, it feeds fuel well when the go pedal’s down. 0-60 in contemporary testing was a touch below 6 seconds; with modern tires and a free-breathing exhaust, I’m fairly sure five seconds flat is attainable.
The cabin, thanks to its steeply-raked windshield, tiny mirrors, massive gauges, and long doors feels like a proper sports coupe, especially if you draw the seat in tight to the aggressively close steering column and sit up as straight as the 50.3-inch low-slung roof will let you. The steering—a quicker-ratio box of the same style found in the Chevy S-10 light pickup—is wildly vague on-center, but pitch the IROC into a corner, and the rear hunkers down and wheel feedback is excellent, allowing easy mid-turn adjustment. The LSD locks predictably, and the 3.45 rear end is just short enough to make second gear a delight on tight roads. This is a thoroughbred pony car.
Not only is it fun, it’s worth driving home how genuinely impressive it is for the era. I owned a turbo MK3 Supra for a long time, and despite all the money and effort I’d throw at its suspension and steering, I could never get this level of communication out of it. In 1988, that Toyota cost $10,000 more than this Chevy. The IROC-Z was the automotive equivalent of a Swiss-crafted sledgehammer on a fire sale.
Of course, the “sledgehammer” part of the equation is what the IROC-Z is remembered for—and sold as. This is the popular high school quarterback’s car he drives away in after shoving you in a locker (see Teenage Dirtbag). Part of this can be ascribed to its outright popularity—166,986 IROCs were sold in just five years of production—and its bargain-basement price that undercut Chevy’s halo-car Corvette by more than half, despite offering similar performance. Its loud styling and massive “IROC-Z” rocker graphics—equipped standard—assuredly cemented it in the minds of many a teenager in the mid-80s. Some of its youthful and [ahem] boisterous buyer base was even targeted directly by Chevy dealers:
But I found that a large part of its hooligan appeal has to do with the car itself. Slide that driver’s seat way back from the steering column, recline a bit, and the third-gen Camaro becomes one of the best laid-back cruisers I’ve ever driven. Throw in the glass-pack pipes on my test car, and it’s the ideal muscle car: it looks loud, it sounds loud, and it kicks ass. For a well-heeled high school quarterback-slash-bully, there is no substitute.
Ultimately, the IROC’s attitude presented a problem for Chevrolet when it came time to re-launch the Camaro in 2010.
Ford’s retro-futuristic Mustang (introduced in 2004) played up its wholesome, all-American roots: It was the car driven by Nancy Drew and Steve McQueen alike. The Dodge Challenger’s revival gave us the muscle car of the troubled antihero: Kowalski racing, grinning, to his death, Heisenberg burning money, showing off his wealth.
But General Motors’ pony car had a muddier image. The Camaro’s first generation, while successful, only had three short years—1967 to 1969—to establish itself in the American automotive lexicon before it was replaced with the second generation. That car’s performance was strangled by emissions regulations and unleaded gas almost immediately after its launch, and is remembered as impotent. The “catfish” fourth-gen Camaro was received so poorly that it killed off the nameplate entirely.
The IROC-Z, meanwhile, is a bonafide American icon. Yet instead of paying homage to the third-gen, General Motors revived the styling from the three-year run of the first generation, and attempted to create a plucky, heroic image to accompany it (see the Transformers character Bumblebee). The SS, the Z/28, and even the 1LE performance package names were all revived, but there was never another IROC. There wasn’t even a subtle stylistic nod to gridded tail lights or hood blisters. GM memory-holed the third-generation Camaro entirely—it was just too brash, too villainous a car to hearken back to.
It’s a pity, because the IROC-Z was a phenomenal machine in both performance and demeanor. The Camaro’s peak—across all of its generations—came when it blended the power of a Corvette, the deftness of a pony car, and the attitude of a bar fight in equal measures. Not all cars need to be clean-shaven heroes. Sometimes, they just need to be bitchin’.
Gallery: 1988 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z Review
