The police just recovered a 1987 Chevrolet Camaro that was reported stolen way back in 1988. The car emerged from the depths of an Indiana reservoir earlier this week after a fisherman using a sonar device to search for lunkers discovered the vehicle and contacted authorities. The Camaro, it should surprise no one to learn, looks rough.
The photos you see here come from the Fishers Police Department, based in a city named Fishers, which sits roughly 24 km from Indianapolis and is home to about 100,000 inhabitants. The police force writes about the Camaro — which was recovered from the Geist reservoir on October 12 — in a Facebook post. That post reads, in part:
Another local fisherman notified us recently of a possible vehicle near the Fall Creek Road bridge by the marina they located using sonar in Geist Reservoir…The vehicle was upside down in several feet of silt. It was successfully removed with the assistance of Garner’s towing. Sadly the owner is now deceased and never was able to find out what happened to their car.
According to the post, the incredibly waterlogged Chevy Camaro had been reported stolen in the summer of 1988, with the police suspecting that the vehicle wound up at the bottom of the reservoir right around that time. “It is hard to imagine the vehicle sat underwater over 30 years undetected,” Fishers Police Department’s post concludes.
It may not be obvious to non-Camaro nerds among you, since the car is obscured by mud, but the recovered 1987 Camaro is the IROC generation primarily known for being piloted by mullet-toting dudes listening to “The Stroke” on loop. You know, this one:
We hope that nobody was injured in this incident, much as we hope that this Camaro isn’t a coveted five-speed model with the 5.0-litre fuel injected V8. That thing made over 150kW and nearly 184nM of torque, all of which deserved to be tearing up streets for 30 years, not rotting at the bottom of a reservoir.
I can’t really make much out about how this Camaro is configured, but I bet some Camaro-diehards will offer some insight in the comments.
All I know is that this poor Camaro, even if it was a base model, deserved to live more than just one year. I bet the engine wasn’t even broken in by the time it hit the lakebed.
The silt, the busted windows, the caved-in roof: The whole thing is just sad.