April Camaro of the Month: Adam Kappell’s 1973 Z/28 Type LT RS

Adam Kappell’s radiant green 1973 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 Type LT RS pairs a track-focused performance package with Chevrolet’s plushest available trim, a combination most Z/28 buyers that year skipped entirely. With only 11,574 Z/28s built out of nearly 97,000 total Camaros for 1973, the odds of finding one dressed in luxury-level Type LT trim get slim fast. Read on to find out just how rare this particular build really is.

Kappell’s radiant green 1973 Camaro doesn’t just carry a Z/28 badge on its front fenders — it carries a build sheet combination that plenty of longtime Camaro people don’t even realize was possible to order that particular year. Pairing the track-focused Z/28 performance package with the plush Type LT trim level sounds like mixing oil and water on paper: one built specifically for the autocross course, the other built specifically to coddle a daily driver with extra insulation and woodgrain trim. Chevrolet actually let buyers have both at the same time in 1973, but not very many buyers actually chose to order it that way when they had the option. Once you see exactly how few Z/28s left the factory that year at all, let alone in this particular trim combination, Kappell’s car starts looking a lot rarer than the average LT-trimmed Camaro parked next to it at any given car show.

Why the Z/28 and LT Combo Was Such an Odd Pairing

The Type LT came standard with a mild 165-horsepower, two-barrel 350 cubic-inch V8 and a genuinely plush interior package that included deluxe seat trim, extra body and hood insulation for a quieter cabin, bright beaded woodgrain trim across the dash and doors, sport mirrors, and a full gauge cluster with complete instrumentation. The Z/28 package swapped in far more serious performance hardware instead, meaning a buyer had to actively and deliberately choose comfort and performance together on the order form rather than simply picking one lane the way most Z/28 shoppers did.

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The Numbers That Make This One Rare

Total 1973 Camaro production came in at 96,751 units across the entire model year, with Type LT models accounting for roughly a third of that total run at 32,327 units, still comfortably the single most popular trim level even without being an outright majority. The Z/28 performance option, by comparison, was a much smaller slice of overall production — just 11,574 units total, split between 6,107 four-speed manual transmissions and 5,467 automatics. That means Z/28s accounted for roughly one in every eight Camaros built that year, and an LT-trimmed Z/28 example narrows that already small pool down even further still.

What the Z/28 Actually Delivered

Under the Z/28’s hood sat a 350 cubic-inch V8 rated at 245 horsepower, enough for a 6.7-second run to 60 mph and a quarter mile covered in 15.2 seconds according to period road tests. Those were respectable numbers for a car built as tightening emissions rules kept squeezing horsepower ratings lower across nearly the entire domestic auto industry throughout the early 1970s, a period when several once-legendary performance nameplates saw their factory output figures drop significantly year over year.

A Small But Telling Comfort Milestone

1973 also marked the first year air conditioning was actually available as a factory option on the Z/28, a small but meaningful detail that mattered enormously to buyers who wanted the performance package without giving up every bit of daily driving comfort in the process. It’s proof that even Chevrolet’s most track-focused Camaro trim level was already starting to bend toward everyday livability, years before the muscle car segment fully pivoted toward comfort-oriented performance cars in the following decade.

1973 as a Transition Year for the Second-Gen Camaro

By 1973, the second-generation Camaro was already several years into a production run that had originally started back in 1970, and tightening federal emissions regulations were actively reshaping what the word “performance” actually meant across the entire domestic lineup. The Z/28’s 245 horsepower rating looked modest compared to earlier LT-1-powered Camaros from just a couple of years prior, but it still represented Chevrolet’s top performance offering available in the Camaro lineup for the year.

Why Color and Options Matter as Much as the Badge

A radiant green example like Kappell’s stands out even among other surviving Z/28s from the same model year, since exterior paint and interior trim combinations varied widely across the entire production run. Certain color and trim pairings turn up far less often in surviving cars today than the broader production totals alone might suggest, since some shades proved far less popular with original buyers and simply weren’t ordered as frequently when the car was new.

Documenting a Genuinely Uncommon Build

Cars that combine a genuinely rare optional package with an unusual color and confirmed matching numbers become progressively harder to verify the further removed they get from the original factory build sheet and dealer paperwork. That difficulty is exactly why a well-documented example like Kappell’s carries extra weight among serious Camaro collectors who understand firsthand just how thin the overlap between the Z/28 package and Type LT trim actually was in period production.

Why This Camaro Earned Recognition as Car of the Month

Recognizing a car like this as Camaro of the Month isn’t just about celebrating a well-preserved example of a popular model, it’s about highlighting a specific, documentable combination that most Camaro owners and even longtime enthusiasts never fully realized Chevrolet actually offered. That kind of recognition helps keep genuinely rare factory combinations from getting lost or misidentified as the surviving population of cars from this era continues to shrink with each passing year.

How Feature Cars Like This Help the Broader Hobby

Highlighting an unusual factory combination like Kappell’s Z/28 Type LT does more than satisfy curiosity among longtime readers, it actively helps other owners correctly identify similar cars sitting unrecognized in garages and back lots across the country. That kind of shared knowledge, built one documented example at a time, is exactly how obscure but genuine factory combinations eventually get properly recognized instead of dismissed as impossible or misremembered by sellers who never checked the actual build sheet.

What Makes a Camaro of the Month Submission Stand Out

Selecting a monthly feature car means weighing more than just condition or paint quality, it means finding examples with a documented story and a specific factory combination worth explaining to readers who might otherwise scroll past another green Camaro without a second look. Kappell’s car earned its spot precisely because the Z/28 and Type LT pairing gives readers something concrete and verifiable to learn, rather than another generic restoration story with nothing distinctive attached to it.

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