`Last' Camaro sold for $71,500 at charity auction; buyer admits he 'wanted it bad'

AUBURN, Ind. (AP) _ The last new Camaro to be sold by Chevrolet _ a red, T-topped Z-28 _ brought a tidy $71,500 at a charity auction. <br><br>``I got a little crazy,'' said the buyer, Mark Gembinski,

Tuesday, September 3rd 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

AUBURN, Ind. (AP) _ The last new Camaro to be sold by Chevrolet _ a red, T-topped Z-28 _ brought a tidy $71,500 at a charity auction.

``I got a little crazy,'' said the buyer, Mark Gembinski, a 32-year-old business manager from Mayville, Mich. ``I paid a lot more than I wanted to, but I wanted it bad.''

When Gembinski was born, his father took him home from the hospital in a 1969 Camaro.

His Z-28 wasn't the last Camaro to roll off the assembly line _ that car is headed for Chevrolet's museum. Gembinski's car was second-to-last, produced last week at a General Motors plant in St. Therese, Quebec.

More than 4 million Camaros were sold since the muscle car debuted in fall 1966 with the 1967 model. It reached its heyday in the disco days of the 1970s but sold poorly in the era of SUVs and imports, and last September, General Motors announced it would stop making the Camaro, along with the Pontiac Firebird.

Gembinski bought his Camaro on Sunday at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Festival, and proceeds will go to the National Association of Students Against Violence Everywhere.

``It's a very sad day for us,'' said Scott Settlemire, Chevrolet's assistant brand manager for the Camaro line. ``But the money is going somewhere good.''