4-on-the-Floor: 1980 Chevrolet El Camino

Manual GM G-body cars are as rare as the uncrushed dreams of aspiring lottery winners. Every once in a great, great while, an El Camino pops up with selectable gears for a fair price. Find this 1980 Chevrolet El Camino for sale in Bakersfield, CA for only $1,000 via craigslist.  Tip from Rock On.

Though it’s been dormant for 22 years, this vehicle was clearly active for quite some time, judging by the high-ish mileage and thick coating of monochromatic doodie under the hood. Even if you were to get this vehicular mullet back to your garage only to have it crumble on jackstands, a G-body manual pedal assembly is worth a grand all day.

Even four gears freely chosen by man and a clutch pedal can’t make a stock 4.3 liter V6 fun. The smart offer would be to pull the motor in the dude’s driveway and get some kind of rebate for it. Then take the money you would’ve spent on a nice example and blow it on an abandoned craigslist redneck 383 stroker project motor for pennies on the dollar. As a completely opposing disclaimer , DT does not endorse buying abandoned hillbilly engine rebuild projects on craigslist.

The interior looks like you’d expect the inside of a thousand-money Camino to look like. Nice but mismatched examples of the grandma’s-sofa-pillows-stitched-to-a-crappy-truck-bench car sofas have been sourced from something substantially bluer. The radio has been at some point grounded to the shift bezel but who can’t admit to worse?

See a better rolling G-body pedal cluster? email us here: tips@dailyturismo.com

Matt, a self-proclaimed bottom-feeder of the classic car market, spends half of his time buying cars, half of his time retrieving them, and the remaining third on keeping them on the road.