A little background history on myself - I've been a Camaro fan since 2002 when I got my first car and it was a '94 Camaro. I've been hooked since. In 2005, I'll never forget being at Camaro Superfest talking to a GM engineer and he said "Make sure you check out the GM section at NAIAS 2006 in January..." A few weeks later, the clay model pictures leaked. Since I couldn't go in person, I sneaked online and watched the unveiling of the Camaro live at the Detroit auto show. I was at the GM Tech Center when they announced the Camaro had been approved to move to production, my '94 Camaro even squeezed into a photo that made it into the newspaper announcing the green light. In 2007, Scott and the Camaro team was generous enough to swing through my humble little car show and bring the silver Camaro concept and the Camaro convertible concept. Every year since then, Scott, Al, John, and Cheryl have been kind enough to stop at my show and give us a little teaser - either a pre-production 2010, convertible, or most recently a pre-production ZL1. I've been cheering for the 5th gen since 2006, but I never had the chance to own one.
Over the last couple of weeks in November, I was talking to my wife about wanting to buy a different car. She's a receptionist at a local Chevy dealership. She priced a Cruze out for me and it was about $15 more than I was currently paying on my 2008 Trailblazer. She was saying that was the best priced car she could get me right now. I told her if I'm going to pay more for a car, I wanted to at least price out a 2012 Camaro. Surprisingly, the 1LS only raised my payment by about $25. I had always thought the Camaro was unattainable and would cost way too much and to find out it was only $25 a month more... I pulled the trigger without even thinking about it.
I turned in my 2008 Trailblazer and immediately fell in love with my new car, a 2012 Camaro 1LS.
I've never owned a manual trans car before so the first challenge has been getting used to driving a stick on a daily basis. I already knew how to drive a manual but I'm still trying to get used to when to shift instead of staying in the lower gears too long. What amazed me today was when I was going through McDonalds and I pulled up to the second window. A little boy was walking towards the building with his dad when he pointed at my car and went "WHOA LOOK AT THAT!" The car has been out for 3 years now and to still be getting that reaction... that was cool.
Here's a picture of my car at the dealership before I took her home:
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The first modification was to cover up those ugly gold bowties. I've gotten the reputation on the forum I run, MiFbody, that I'm kinda carbon fiber crazy. So of course, when I saw the CF vinyl bowties, I had to get them.
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Next was to get some gills:
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And yesterday, after getting the stripe kit for Christmas, I had to immediately install them in the garage while it was still warm. Glad I did it when I did - it was 50 degrees yesterday and tonight it's dropping to the 20's.
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