tarheel

Other than a great way to spot if a car has the original paint. Does anyone have an idea why the Z28 had black paint in the headlight pockets?
And, what years are they black. I remember the IROCs also had the black scheme.

sid rs91

my 2nd gen had the black trim around the lights.

scottmoyer

They were black because the designers decided to make them black! It was just a design option. Why did the early Z28s have the ground effects a different color than the body? Same reason, because the designer thought it would look good.

All Z28s, including IROC-Zs had the black headlight pockets from 82-92.

jeffwilly

Because it looks great. I think all third gen iroc's and z28's had the black.

LoudmouthSS

iTrader: (6)

haha i remember reading camaro performers and they had a z28 they were repainting...i believe it was an '85. They wrote "Camaros are supposed to give black eyes, not have them", and they ditched they black around the headlights...

Idk why i decided that was relevant to this topic, but i thought it was kinda funny.

Darkshot

iTrader: (4)

You are forgiven, I chuckled

Ditto on the design theme, they thought it would look good. And rightfully so, it does! I know my 91 RS is getting black around the lights when I get a chance to paint it.

S10GUY

iTrader: (1)

it could have also been a throw back t the first gen bigblock cars. think of a 69 ss or yenko they always had a blacked out rear tail light panel and the other lesser models were body color,

Air_Adam

Not just 3rdgens, but I think all the rubber-bumper 2ndgen Z28s had them too, as did the LT1 4thgen Camaros. My '83 and '97 both have black headlight pockets.

Iroctopless

There's a little more to it than the designers wanting them black or because it looked good (I do agree with both of those statements). If that were only the case, wouldn't all Camaros then have black?
Because the Camaro has different option packages (RS. Z28, IrocZ, Berlinetta, etc), with purchase prices differing by >$3000 between them, the design teams consider different ways to make them identifiable to the general public. Those ways include things like wheel styles, decals & badging, body trim, etc. And of coarse the black headlight buckets.

TIMMYS89GTA

iTrader: (28)

yeah,I can agree with that,I also am into 2nd gens. I own a 81 right now,and have had several 2nd and 3rd's in the past and I remember the 2nd gen z's were the only models from 78-81 w/the black h/l trim all others were chrome.
Perhaps the designers wanted to just continue the subtle differences between models for history reasons?
After all,you could special order anything you wanted if you really wanted it and had the money to fork over.
But all in all,I totally prefer the blackout look whether its an RS,Z28 or IROC-Z

I H8 WWD

iTrader: (5)

Its what makes these cars bad ***, I have even came to the conclusion that my Z31 will have black headlight buckets when time comes to paint it.

Black buckets with red glowing bulbs....Scary.

P.S. I have red cruising bulbs...

tarheel

from everyone's input, it sounds like the best reason is to identify a higher optioned model?

Seems reasonable...if i were paying 3k over the the base model, i would want lower spoilers...decals...power options...higher window sticker...and...lower contrasting paint scheme with black headlight pockets. Sounds like we described the Z28 and IROC packages.....lol