Chevrolet Camaro 1968 – 7 Second – Twin Turbo!

A first-generation Camaro that looks completely stock from the outside just ran 7.79 seconds at 179 mph, numbers that belong more to a purpose-built race car than a 55-year-old street body. Twin turbochargers, not a big-block V8, are doing the work this time, hidden behind a factory-style front clip. Here’s how builders are extracting supercar-slaying performance from classic sheet metal.

7.79 at 179MPH!

A stock-looking 1968 Camaro rolls to the line, and nothing about its stance gives away what’s about to happen. Then the tree drops, and the car disappears down the strip faster than most modern supercars could manage. Underneath that factory-style sheet metal sits a twin-turbocharged setup pushing numbers that would have been unthinkable to the engineers who built this car new. Builds like this have become a fixture at events chasing the elusive seven-second quarter mile in a body that’s over half a century old. The trap speed alone is enough to make spectators check the scoreboard twice.

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Seven Seconds Flat, Nearly 180 Miles An Hour

This particular Camaro ran 7.79 seconds at 179 mph, a pass recorded in the Street Outlaw class at an event held at Wild Horse Pass Raceway during a Street Car Takeover in Phoenix. That kind of number puts the car firmly in territory shared with purpose-built race cars, not street-driven classics, and it reflects a broader trend among builders using twin-turbo setups on first-generation Camaros. Other well-documented examples include an all-wheel-drive 1968 Camaro that ran 7.834 seconds at 176.96 mph with a similar twin-turbo configuration, and a street-legal Camaro SS that posted 7.81 at 187.24 mph, showing just how competitive this specific niche of drag racing has become. Events built around this exact format, no-prep and heads-up shootouts pitting street-style cars against the clock, have exploded in popularity over the last decade, turning what used to be a backyard bragging right into a nationally televised competition.

Turbos Where The Big Block Used To Live

What makes these builds notable isn’t just the raw speed, it’s where that power comes from. Instead of the big-block V8s that defined 1968 performance Camaros originally, twin-turbo setups let builders extract seven-second, sub-180-mph performance from smaller displacement engines while keeping the factory-style body and stance largely intact. Builders chasing these numbers typically start with a stripped, caged first-generation Camaro shell, add a modern rear axle and driveshaft loop for safety, and route the turbo plumbing through the factory core support to preserve the stock-looking front clip that makes runs like this one so surprising to watch. That combination, a classic silhouette hiding modern forced-induction technology, has become one of the more popular directions for serious drag radial and Street Outlaw competitors working with first-generation Camaros, more than 55 years after the model debuted.

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