Chevrolet Camaro 1967 RS/SS 502

Chevrolet sold the Rally Sport and Super Sport packages separately in 1967, so a genuine RS/SS required a buyer to pay for both, and factory-correct examples are rarer than either package alone. This one keeps that foundation and swaps in 502 cubic inches of modern General Motors crate big block, an engine rated well beyond anything the factory offered. Read on to find out why builders keep making that trade.

General Motors sells an engine that will make a first-generation Camaro faster than anything Chevrolet ever put in one, and it will sell it to you in a crate, on a pallet, with a warranty. That fact has quietly reshaped what a big-block first-gen Camaro means. A car like this 1967 RS/SS keeps the two option packages that defined the model’s debut year and then throws out the part that would have cost the most and been the hardest to find, replacing a numbers-matching 396 with 502 cubic inches of modern General Motors iron. Purists will tell you that ruins it. The people who actually drive these cars tend to disagree, and the argument is more interesting than either side admits.

Two Options Nobody Had to Combine

The Camaro arrived for 1967 with a genuinely modular option structure, and the RS and SS packages were sold entirely independently of one another. A buyer could order a six-cylinder Camaro with the Rally Sport appearance group and get all the visual drama with none of the performance, or order a Super Sport with a big block and none of the RS trim. Combining them required checking both boxes on the order form and paying for both, which is precisely why a factory-correct RS/SS is a meaningfully rarer thing than either package on its own.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

What the RS Package Actually Bought

RPO Z22, the Rally Sport package, was fundamentally about the front of the car. It replaced the open grille with vacuum-operated hideaway headlight doors that closed flush when the lamps were off, giving the Camaro a clean, unbroken face that remains one of the most recognizable details of the entire generation. It also brought revised taillamps with the backup lights relocated below the rear bumper, RS badging, and additional bright trim around the wheel openings and rocker panels. It added no power whatsoever, and it is arguably the single most copied option in Camaro restoration.

What the SS Package Actually Bought

RPO Z27, the Super Sport, was the performance half of the equation. It brought a V8 powertrain, a specific hood with simulated louvers, stiffer suspension, red-stripe wide-oval tires and SS identification. The base SS engine was a 350-cubic-inch small block rated at 295 horsepower, notable as the first appearance of the 350 in any Chevrolet product. Above it sat the 396 big block in two forms, the 325-horsepower L35 and the solid-lifter L78 rated at 375, the latter being the one that turned the Camaro from a pony car into something Mustang buyers genuinely worried about.

The Numbers Behind a Genuine 1967 RS/SS

The production figures explain why authenticating one of these matters. Chevrolet built roughly 220,900 Camaros in that first year, of which approximately 64,842 carried the RS package and 34,411 carried the SS. Cars with both are a subset of an already limited pool. Narrow it further to the top L78 396 and the figure drops to somewhere near 1,138 cars, a number small enough that a documented example commands prices that make swapping in a crate engine look like a public service rather than a crime.

The Engine GM Built Thirty Years Too Late

The 502 sitting in this car descends directly from the same Mark big-block family that produced the 396 and 427 of the era, which is a large part of why the swap works so cleanly. General Motors developed the crate version decades after the originals went out of production, and the well-known ZZ502 variant is rated at 502 horsepower and 567 lb-ft of torque with rectangular-port aluminum cylinder heads, a hydraulic roller camshaft and compression low enough to run on pump gasoline. It is emphatically not a period engine. It is a modern engine wearing a familiar external architecture.

Why Builders Choose the Crate Over the Correct Block

The appeal to builders is straightforward economics and reliability. A correct, date-coded L78 block suitable for a numbers-matching restoration is scarce and expensive, and once installed it demands premium fuel, periodic valve lash adjustment and a tolerance for an idle that sounds like the engine is unwell. A crate 502 arrives assembled and dyno-verified, produces substantially more power and considerably more torque, starts reliably in any weather and can be serviced with parts available from any speed shop. For a car intended to be driven rather than judged, the trade is not close.

What Has to Change Around the Engine

Dropping 502 cubic inches into a first-generation Camaro is not purely a matter of engine mounts, though the shared big-block architecture handles the hard part. The car needs a cooling system sized for the heat a 500-horsepower engine rejects, a transmission and rear axle capable of surviving 567 lb-ft, and brakes that bear no resemblance to what Chevrolet fitted in 1967. Front spring rates typically need revisiting to account for the weight distribution, and most builders address the notoriously flexible first-gen subframe with additional bracing. Shops that specialize in these cars, like the Texas outfit behind this one, tend to sort all of that as a package.

The Case Against the Swap

The counterargument deserves a fair hearing. Every original big-block Camaro converted or modified is one fewer surviving example of a car that was never built in large numbers, and the value of documented, unmolested cars keeps climbing precisely because so many were cut up during decades when they were merely used cars. There is a real preservation case for leaving a genuine RS/SS alone. The compromise most of the hobby has settled on is that ordinary six-cylinder and base V8 shells make excellent restomod candidates, while numbers-matching cars get restored rather than reimagined.

What the Camaro’s First Year Was Really About

It is worth remembering what Chevrolet was actually doing in 1967. The Camaro existed because Ford had spent nearly three years selling Mustangs unopposed, and Chevrolet’s answer was a car built around choice, with a long option list that let buyers assemble very different cars from the same body. Stacking RS on SS was itself an exercise in ignoring the intended categories. A car built to one owner’s specification with an engine the factory would not have sold him is more faithful to that original spirit than most people give it credit for.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter