I have been accused of not liking American cars… oddly, on a post I did on Active|Rain, I have been accused of not liking foreign cars.  Oh well…

Anyway, I will admit that I’m not a big GM guy, but they have certainly made some significant vehicles… vehicles that make my heart flutter a little.  Of course, there were the muscle cars of the late 1960s and early 1970s.  All of the Detroit makers had some impressive muscle rolling off of the line.  And those cars were based in the drag racers of the early 1960s.  They were specials… low production runs…

Back in the mid 1980s, Showroom Stock racing was coming of age.  The premise was simple… Win on Sunday, sell on Monday… and race cars that were JUST like the cars that consumers could buy at the dealer.  The changes were quite limited…  Shocks, tires, oil… add a roll cage and a racing harness…  You’re in business.

For GM, there was a problem.  Ford’s Mustangs were lighter, and had similar power.  More importantly, because of the lighter weight, the Ford’s had better braking capability.  So, there was a Mustang train around the track…

That simply wouldn’t do…

So, the idea of a racing special Camaro was born.  It would be a secret car (I can attest that there were a lot of dealers that couldn’t find the RPO code with both hands and a flashlight…) for racers and those in the know.  It would be the Camaro 1LE.

There were a few mods that came in the 1LE package… incrementalism at its best.

• 12″ Discs off of the Caprice and 2 piston Calipers from the Corvette.  This fixed the weak braking problem faily well…
• Baffled gas tank and upgraded fuel pump.  As soon as the car got serious brakes the engineers found out that the engine starved of gas under heavy braking.
• A modified 5th gear (later model got a 6 speed).  This gave a lower OD so that the revs were more suited to racing.
• Lighter weight aluminum drive shaft.
• Oil cooler.
• Special shocks and rubber jounce inserts.
• No air conditioning… or fog lights… power anything…

For all of this grooviness, the buyer paid $675 more than a “lesser” Z-28 Camaro.  Oddly, the car could be ordered in a “Street” version with A/C, it was slightly less expensive than the non-A/C version… but wasn’t as cool.  In 1988, there were 4.  Four.  Less than 5…  In 1989, there were 111.  1990 saw 62 Camaro 1LEs.  For 1991 GM pumped out a whopping 478… obviously everyone knew the secret.  Now you know too… It mostly died a quiet death in 1999, but by then had outgrown its racer roots and become just another performance option, and not a hardcore racer option.

A 3rd Generation RX7 chasing a Camaro 1LE

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