Chevrolet Camaro 1967 Crusher vs ’70 Super Bee 1,500-Mile Burnout-Fest!

A 1967 Camaro SS and a 1970 Dodge Super Bee were built three years and one philosophy apart. One was General Motors scrambling to answer the Mustang; the other was Chrysler selling the largest possible engine in the cheapest possible package. Put them together for a fifteen-hundred-mile road trip and the differences stop being trivia and start being mechanical reality. Read on to find out what separates these two, and which one is actually the better car to point at a horizon.

Three years and a complete change of mood separate these two machines. The Camaro arrived in 1967 as Chevrolet’s overdue answer to a car that had already been outselling everything in its path for three seasons. The Super Bee arrived as something else entirely — Chrysler’s attempt to sell the largest engine it built inside the cheapest body it could get away with, wearing a cartoon insect on the flank as if to make sure nobody mistook it for a luxury purchase. Line them up and they look like rivals. Drive them and they feel like arguments from different decades. Fifteen hundred miles is more than enough to expose which is which.

Two Cars, Two Chapters of the Same War

The gap between them is only three model years, but those years covered most of the muscle car era’s arc. In 1967 the segment was still expanding, manufacturers were still adding models, and the horsepower race was accelerating with no obvious ceiling in sight. By 1970 the ceiling had arrived: engines were at their most outrageous, insurance companies had noticed, and the federal government was drafting the emissions rules that would end the whole business within two years. A 1967 Camaro is a car built on optimism. A 1970 Super Bee is a car built at the very top of the market, moments before the floor gave way.

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The 1967 Camaro Was Chevrolet Playing Catch-Up

Ford had the pony car market entirely to itself from April 1964, and Chevrolet needed almost two and a half years to respond. The Camaro finally went on sale in September 1966 as a 1967 model, built on a new platform with a bolted-on front subframe and a unitized body aft of the firewall, and Chevrolet shifted more than 220,000 of them in that first year. It arrived late, but it arrived with a broader engine range than the Mustang had launched with and a chassis that would prove considerably more adaptable to racing than anyone at Ford expected.

The SS Engine Ladder

The Super Sport package was the version that mattered to enthusiasts. The base SS came with the L48 350-cubic-inch small-block rated at 295 horsepower and 380 lb-ft, a strong street engine and the first appearance of a displacement that would define Chevrolet for decades. Buyers wanting more moved up to the 396-cubic-inch big-block, offered as the L35 at 325 horsepower or the L78 at 375. Every SS also brought upgraded suspension and a heavier front stabilizer bar, and the higher-output cars carried the sturdier 12-bolt rear axle, so the hardware genuinely backed up the badging.

The Super Bee Was Mopar’s Budget Weapon

Dodge came at the problem from the opposite direction. The Super Bee launched for 1968 as the corporate response to Plymouth’s Road Runner, built on the same idea: take a mid-size Coronet, delete as much comfort equipment as possible, install a large engine, price it aggressively, and let the buyer spend what they saved at the drag strip. It was performance sold as a value proposition rather than an aspirational one, and the cartoon bee decal on the rear quarter made absolutely certain nobody mistook the intent.

1970’s Engine Ladder Was Even Steeper

By 1970 the engine ladder had gotten steeper still. The standard 383 Magnum was rated at 335 horsepower, which would have been plenty for almost anyone. Above it sat the 440 Six Pack, feeding a 440-cubic-inch big-block through three two-barrel carburetors for 390 horsepower. At the very top was the 426 HEMI at 425 horsepower, which meant a buyer could walk into a Dodge dealership, tick a box, and drive away in a stripped-out economy-trim mid-size car carrying the most fearsome engine in North America under a cartoon decal.

The Year the Bee Nearly Vanished

1970 was also the year the formula stopped working. Super Bee production fell to roughly 15,500 cars, down from nearly 28,000 the year before, as insurance surcharges on high-performance models made them prohibitively expensive for the young buyers they had been designed around. Dodge moved the nameplate onto the Charger body for 1971 and then retired it. The steep decline is exactly why 1970 cars are now more collectible than the higher-volume 1969s, and why the rarest engine combinations from that year command the numbers they do.

The Coronet’s Divisive Face

The 1970 Coronet also wore one of the most divisive faces Chrysler ever approved: a split front bumper forming two separate chrome loops around the headlights, a design that looked like nothing else on the road and that buyers either loved instantly or refused to consider. Add the twin-scoop power bulge hood, the C-stripe running down the flank, and the optional Ramcharger fresh-air setup, and the car projected a very specific attitude. Time has been kind to it. Contemporary opinion was considerably more mixed.

What Fifteen Hundred Miles Actually Demands

A fifteen-hundred-mile trip in either car is a genuine test, and it punishes exactly the things a quarter-mile pass never touches. Neither was engineered for sustained highway cruising: three-speed automatics and four-speed manuals without overdrive mean high engine speeds all day, cooling systems were sized for 1960s traffic rather than modern summer interstate crawls, and factory brakes were marginal even when new. Charging systems built for a radio and headlights struggle with anything modern added to them. Cars that complete trips like this have almost always been quietly upgraded in a dozen small ways.

Why Burnout Culture Attached Itself to These Cars

The burnout habit that follows both of these cars around is not an accident of culture. Big-block torque arriving low in the rev range, comparatively narrow rear tires by any modern standard, and open or lightly limited differentials made losing traction the default rather than the exception. What was once simply a byproduct of the hardware became a performance ritual, and it remains an expensive one — tires are consumable, but ring gears, axles, and transmissions are not, and a fifteen-hundred-mile trip built around the practice tends to find the weakest part in either driveline.

Which One Would You Actually Take Home?

Which one goes home with you comes down to what you want the car to be. The Camaro is the more modern-feeling machine, lighter on its feet, better supported by the aftermarket than almost any car ever built, and easier to make genuinely good at everything. The Super Bee is the more honest one, a car that never pretended to be anything other than an engine with seats, and one that carries a rarity the Camaro cannot match. Neither is the wrong answer, which is precisely why the argument has lasted this long. Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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