Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 5, 1991 TAG: 9102050195
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: DAVID JACOBSON THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For four years in a row that year and make has been the most stolen car in America, according to CCC Information Services Inc., a Chicago-based company that puts values on cars for insurance companies.
Last year, on an average day, 3.5 such Camaros disappeared from the driveways, garages and parking places of their rightful, insured owners.
Are these cars really that hot? Or are thieves just grabbing them for the fuzzy dice and Playboy air fresheners?
Cracking the case of the captured coupes obviously calls for a test drive.
We find one of the frequently filched 5-year-olds on a used car lot. And yes, it was one sleek package of two-door T-topped trouble: candy-apple red.
For starters, to a regular driver of subcompact dinghies, the massive hood of this '86 Camaro is like the prow of some great, ocean-going ship.
When cruising, the passing scene is reflected in a sea of shiny sheet metal - stately homes, road signs, all miniaturized and deformed, breaking like flecks of foam over that endless front end.
Indeed, everything about the car seems oversized. The big wall of black dashboard rears up and juts out at you like King Kong's brow. The five-speed stick shift is topped by a knob big as a billiard ball.
But then the windshield seems, in proportion, too small. Peering through it over that vast hummock of hood, one knows how a giant sumo wrestler must feel, lying on his back, surveying his girth.
All this, while the engine, idling at a street light, generates a throaty throb. "Hey . . . you . . . wimp," it mutters.
The '86 V-6 sports the relatively light weight of a full-grown walrus and the relatively high power of 135 horses driving its rear axle. With powerful guts and a pug rear end, it makes peeling out as natural as breathing.
So maybe the Chevy spokesmen are right on target when they speak of the Camaro's hyper-theft as a "twisted compliment" and the product of "misguided desire." This is, after all, a hot car.
"Who's going to go joy-riding in a four-door Corolla?" asked Tom Hoxie, assistant director of public relations for Chevrolet, citing the Camaro's "aggressive" oversized tires and aerodynamic "ground effects."
"The fact that this thing is stolen as much as it is obviously means it has some appeal," Hoxie said.
To gauge the real depth of that appeal you have to talk to hard-core Camaro fans like Tony Malgioglio, 23, a wholesale butcher from East Hartford, Conn.
Malgioglio vividly recalled his transcendent Camaro test drive of his '87 "gunsmoke gray" Z28 model.
"That was it. That's all I wanted. I didn't want to see or look at anything else. I didn't care about anything else."
Indeed, after adding a hood scoop and custom paint details, Malgioglio's biggest fear is that his Camaro will join those herds of purloined pony cars.
We're still left wondering why it is mainly Camaros that are getting swiped. (Besides the most-grabbed '86, four or five other '80s models have consistently placed in the top 10 in CCC's annual report of stolen cars.)
Why not the nearly identical Pontiac Firebird "sister car," with its cool flip-up headlights and the flaming Germanic eagle on its nose? Why not the arch-rival Ford Mustang?
"Why buy Nikes over Reeboks? Just because they're Nikes," said Don Kindred, vice president of the Connecticut Camaro Owners Association.
OK, let's drop that. Too metaphysical. Why the '86 model? The one we test-drove had 66,341 miles on it and windows that rattled like a New York City cab. It had the turning radius of an arthritic bison.
The folks who compile the theft report at CCC explain it this way: Thousands of '86 Camaros are not being swiped by starry-eyed joy-riders. Rather there's a vast illegal industry, a black market in stolen parts.
The Camaro is a popular car. So popular that Chevy has not changed it much since 1982. Therefore its valuable parts are readily interchangeable with other years' models - hundreds of thousands of cars, said Bill Geen, CCC's senior vice president for valuation services.
"That's a bigger factor than it being a hot-looking car," he said.
\ Note: this story ran in the Metro edition on February 6, 1991.
by CNB