Brangeta

I was browsing Camaros for sale as I do every day, and was intrigued by this '97 B4C (police package) Camaro because of it being repainted a dark gray color.


So while I am saving the pictures, adding it to my custom paint color folder in my Camaro folder, I am scrolling through the pics... and discover something absolutely amazing...


THE CAR WAS ORIGINALLY PURPLE!!!! This B4C Camaro is one of only SIXTEEN B4C Camaros that was painted Bright Purple Metallic! I know one was in service in Woodbridge, VA and this one was in service in Houston along with one other in Houston!

Bright Purple Metallic B4C: 0 manual, 16 automatic, total of 16

This color as most of you know from looking at my site, was only used in 1997 and 1998. There were no B4C Camaros in Bright Purple Metallic in 1998.

Insanely incredible that I would accidentally find this, when the seller did not even mention the car was originally purple. It was repainted blue at some point in its life, which they do mention as being Houston Police Department blue.



The car has over 90,000 miles on it now and to be quite honest, the interior is beat to #@*%, but look at this...



It only had 20,000 miles in 2005. If it was still Bright Purple Metallic back then... I would have killed to have owned it! Oh man. Talk about a rare car.

I asked the seller if they had any pictures of the car when it was still purple, and I'm waiting to hear back. For now, I'll just post this... which is a representation of how awesome this car probably used to look:


I contacted the Houston police department and they confirmed that the car was indeed one of their cars. They said they don't have any known pictures, but I am requesting they look deeper .

Brangeta

Seller didn't have any pictures of the car when it was purple, but he did show me that he has another B4C Camaro he's selling that was BPM, and is now Sunset Orange.

Sad that they repainted them blue, and then these other colors.

reamo04

i hate when people paint cars....

JakeRobb

Not another of the 16 from '97, was it?

JakeRobb

Why?

Someday, I want to repaint my NBM Camaro to Lemans Blue Metallic, like this:

Brangeta

I don't mind it when it's a common car, but wow, just wow. Apparently the cars weren't purple very long unfortunately though. They looked like this before they were painted these colors:


Why the HPD didn't order them in that color from GM in the first place is unusual to me. I believe you had to order a minimum of 12 cars to have them a special color on Fleet sales. I don't remember... 10 or 12...

Brangeta

Yes, it was that orange one above.

JakeRobb

So this one guy has two of the 16 cars?

Does he know how rare they are?

Brangeta

Yeah, he has two of them he's trying to sell. They aren't selling even though his prices are insanely reasonable. I would blame the pathetically poorly masked paint jobs for that. I told him how rare they are, and how it doesn't matter to the price anymore.

To me (a person who would be interested in one of these cars if they were still purple)... they really aren't worth anything now. They aren't original any longer, and they would be very expensive to return to close to original (or better). They have the usual problems these decommissioned B4C Camaros have (holes drilled places, things broken in the interior, etc.) in addition to the paint which is just plain not good. The interior parts that need replacing would be over $2000 I think, and getting all the paint off and redone would be an expensive process, because the paint jobs were obviously done on top of each other. So there's purple, then blue, then _____ on top of that.

The mileage isn't bad (93K on the gray one I think, and about 78K on the orange one), but I'm looking for a Z28 with less than 30k miles on it and am in no hurry in this bad economy. I don't have the money to buy what I want (a less than 30K one) right now anyway. I could get one of these, but since they aren't purple and are in poor shape, I wouldn't want to mess with them.

It's unfortunate what happens to what is a desirable car for one person, and an undesirable car for another person. I would bet that a lot of the purple cars have been repainted different colors by owners who dislike purple.

johnny6

That's nuts, he's go 2 of 16 and they are both repainted How much are they asking for them?

Brangeta

I think it was about $2k a piece.

Brangeta

This is off topic a little bit, but on topic in another way. I'm searching cardomain right now for BPM '97 Camaros, and this one came up, and... and... it shows what seems to be really common with this color... it gets repainted some other less spectacular color.

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2948625

From this


To this


The owner should have just bought a black one and repainted it in my opinion...

Something else funny to note is that I apparently found this cardomain page back in March, commented on the guestbook, and I don't remember this car whatsoever!

camaro_chic17

I can see why people repaint them.. I HATED when my car looked purple (it was actually Kandy Cobalt Blue over a Stratto Blue base but in a lot of lighting it looked purple). The color changing between blue and purple was kinda cool, but I couldn't stand when it looked too purple.

I am only now happy with the color of my car after its last paint job.

Then, I'm also not a person who cares about keeping my cars stock. I want my cars to look how I dream of them looking.

Brangeta

Stock isn't incredibly important to me, but keeping things better than or equal to stock are important to me. A sunset orange or dark gray Camaro with a purple engine bay isn't an improvement. Should have just left them purple to begin with.

Your car is awesome, but I did like it better when it had that purple tint to it lol.

Brangeta

I'm starting to notice a pattern here...

It used to be a '97 Bright Purple Metallic RS. Now it's a '97 RS looking like a '96 RS.