The 1rst 1967 Camaro Z28 produced by Chevrolet & Engine Sound

Gold paint, a high-revving 302 small-block, and a decade-long restoration — this 1967 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28, filmed at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, turns out to be the very first Z/28 Chevrolet ever produced. Owner Jon Mello spent ten years getting it right after discovering exactly what he had. Watch the full story behind Chevrolet’s original Trans-Am homologation special.

Somewhere in a parking lot in the summer of 1968, a road construction flagman stopped traffic and got his first look at a car that would change the rest of his life — a brand-new Camaro Z/28. He never forgot it, and more than fifty years later, that same memory shows up in the comments under this video about the very first Z/28 Chevrolet ever built. Finished in gold paint and powered by a small-block engine that revved like nothing else on the street, this specific car isn’t just old — it’s the literal starting point of one of the most respected badges in Chevrolet history. How does a car like that survive intact for over half a century?

Built to Win a Racing Series, Not Just to Sell

The Z/28 package wasn’t created as a simple trim upgrade — it existed specifically so Chevrolet could homologate the Camaro for SCCA Trans-Am racing, a series with strict displacement limits that ruled out the brand’s larger big-block options entirely. That racing-driven origin story is exactly why the earliest Z/28s, including this one, feel so different from a standard Camaro of the same model year: every part of the package was chosen to win a specific kind of race, not to maximize showroom appeal. Chevrolet built the Z/28 in genuinely small numbers during its 1967 debut — just 602 units all told — making even a standard early example a legitimately rare find decades later.

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302 Cubic Inches, Redlined Like a Race Engine

Trans-Am’s displacement cap meant Chevrolet needed something under 305 cubic inches, and the solution was a 302 small-block built by combining a 327’s block with a 283’s shorter-stroke crankshaft, creating an engine engineered specifically to rev far higher than a typical American V8 of the period. It was underrated on paper, officially listed well below its actual output, a common trick manufacturers used at the time to keep insurance costs and factory racing politics manageable. Verifying a claim like ‘first ever produced’ typically requires matching cowl tags, invoice paperwork, and production sequence numbers against Chevrolet’s own historical records, a process that leaves little room for wishful thinking once it’s actually been done properly.

The Owner Who Figured Out What He Had

This particular car’s owner, Jon Mello, has had it since 2000, and according to the video, only gradually pieced together that his gold Camaro wasn’t just an early Z/28 — it was the very first one Chevrolet ever produced. That kind of discovery doesn’t happen overnight; it takes years of research, cross-referencing build sheets, and comparing details against other known early-production cars before an owner can say with confidence that they’re sitting on a piece of literal automotive firsts. Every part sourced during that decade had to match what would have been available when the car was originally built, ruling out easier, more modern reproduction parts whenever an original or correctly period-appropriate piece could be tracked down instead.

Ten Years to Get It Right

Once Mello understood exactly what he owned, he committed to a ten-year, period-correct restoration aimed at returning the car to its original racing-era condition rather than simply making it look good for a car show. That kind of timeline reflects just how meticulous the process was, chasing correct parts, finishes, and details rather than taking shortcuts that would have gotten the car back on the road faster but compromised its accuracy as the genuine first Z/28. Shows like MCACN exist specifically to give cars with documented, significant histories a stage in front of an audience that actually understands what they’re looking at, rather than getting lost among more generic restorations.

Where This Car Was Filmed

This video was filmed at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, an event widely recognized as one of the premier gatherings for unrestored and expertly restored American performance cars. A car with a story as significant as being the first Z/28 ever built is exactly the kind of vehicle that MCACN’s audience and organizers actively seek out for the show floor.

A Flagman’s Memory From the Summer of ’68

One of the most striking comments under this video comes from a viewer who worked as a flagman on highway construction back in the summer of 1968 and vividly remembers stopping traffic for the very first Z/28 he’d ever seen — an encounter that, in his own words, got him permanently hooked on small-block Chevy power. More than fifty years later, he still says the 1967 Camaro remains his favorite of every Camaro generation that followed. It’s the kind of distinction that matters enormously to historians and collectors even when it makes very little difference to how the car actually drives down the road. Most enthusiasts will never own a numbers-matching first-of-anything, which is exactly why a documented example like this one draws such an outsized reaction whenever it makes a public appearance.

Why the First One Matters More Than the Rest

Being the literal first example of a legendary package carries a different kind of significance than simply being an early or rare one. Every Z/28 built after this car owes its existence to whatever engineering and homologation decisions were finalized on this exact vehicle, making it less a collector’s curiosity and more a documented starting point for an entire performance lineage that Chevrolet continued building on for generations. Fifty-plus years later, it’s still doing exactly what it did the first time a flagman waved it through a construction zone: making a lasting impression on everyone who sees it.

Gold Paint and a Legacy Nobody Saw Coming

Finished in gold rather than one of the more commonly remembered Z/28 color combinations, this car doesn’t announce its significance the way a flashier example might. But that understated presentation is part of what makes its story so compelling — a genuinely unassuming-looking Camaro that turned out to be the literal first of a nameplate that would go on to define an entire era of small-block performance, restored over a full decade by an owner determined to get every detail right.

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