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This 1979 Camaro Z/28 wears T-tops, flat black stripes and a Procharged small block sending more than 600 horsepower to the rear tires. The factory version made 175. That gap is the entire story of the second-generation Z28, a car that sold in record numbers during the worst period for American performance in living memory. Read on for how it managed that and why builders still start here.
Casey Underdahl and his father dragged a 1969 Camaro body from Georgia to Minnesota believing it was ready for paint. What they actually bought was a shell with filler and seam sealer hiding rust in the firewall, roof, and window channels. What came out the other end was a pro-touring car built to be judged on a stopwatch, not a show field. Read on to find out what it takes to make a G-machine that actually does everything.
This Bolero Red 1967 Camaro convertible wears the Rally Sport package, which bought hidden headlamps and extra brightwork and precisely zero additional horsepower. Underneath sits the 327 Turbo-Fire V8, rated at 275 horsepower and quick enough to make the point without a big-block badge. Only a small fraction of RS Camaros that year were convertibles. Read on to find out why the mid-range V8 drop-top is the combination collectors quietly prefer.
This 1967 Camaro pairs a deceptively restrained exterior and factory houndstooth interior with a 502-horsepower ZZ502 crate engine, filmed in detail at Fast Lane Classic Cars in Missouri. A Borg Warner four-speed and 12-bolt rear handle the power, while front disc brakes and modern tires keep it planted. Commenters can’t stop calling it a dream car. Watch the full walkaround to see what 502 horsepower looks like in a car that doesn’t announce itself.
Tom Bailey’s twin-turbo 1969 Camaro, known as Sick Seconds, makes more than 3,300 horsepower on roughly 20 pounds of boost and has run 6.94 seconds at 208 mph in the quarter-mile. What separates it from every other car capable of those numbers is that it drives home afterward instead of riding a trailer. Here is how a street-legal first-gen Camaro ended up on the wrong side of drag racing’s oldest dividing line.
Pro Street builders have spent decades chasing four-digit horsepower numbers while keeping their cars just barely street legal, and this 1969 Camaro SS pushes that formula to roughly 1,800 horsepower. Stretched, tubbed rear quarters and a reinforced Dana 60 rear end hide underneath bodywork that still reads as a classic first-gen Camaro. Read on to see what it actually takes to get a muscle car this far past factory spec.
Chevrolet capped Camaro engines at 400 cubic inches in 1969, so a handful of persistent dealers found a loophole through a fleet-ordering system meant for taxis and police cars. The result was a plain-looking SS hiding a genuine Corvette-derived 427 big block under a hood with no stripes or scoops to give it away. Read on to see how the COPO program slipped past Chevrolet’s own rules.
On paper the 2016 Shelby GT350R had 21 more horsepower than the 2015 Camaro Z/28, which should have settled the argument before either car turned a wheel. The dyno told a different story: down low, the Chevrolet made almost a hundred more pound-feet of torque. Motor Trend took both to Chuckwalla Valley Raceway with Randy Pobst driving to find out which philosophy actually worked. Read on to find out which one walked away with the title.
Chevrolet built 114,630 Camaros for 1971, a fraction of what the nameplate had managed at its peak, with a UAW strike and a federal fuel mandate both squeezing the second generation from opposite directions. Only 4,862 of them were Z/28s. This lightly modified example keeps its interior close to stock, and that restraint says something about where the second-gen market has landed.
The 1969 Camaro wore its sculpted sheet metal for exactly one model year before the second generation arrived, and it became the most recognizable first-generation shape of them all. The SS package offered a 350 or three separate 396 ratings topping out with the solid-lifter L78. Here is what separated those engines, what sat above them in the COPO catalog, and why documentation matters so much on this particular car.
This heavily modified 1969 Camaro pairs a shape every muscle car fan can identify on sight with a drivetrain General Motors never offered — twin turbochargers, a later-model front clip, and an underside finished as cleanly as the paint. It’s built on the final and highest-volume year of the first-generation Camaro. Read on to find out what pushes a builder to reinvent a body this collectible instead of leaving it alone.
On paper the 2011 Camaro SS convertible should beat the Mustang GT convertible without breaking a sweat, since it brings a 6.2-liter V8 and a 14 horsepower advantage to the fight. In period testing it lost anyway. The reason is a number neither brochure put on the front page. Read on to find out why 413 pounds mattered more than 14 horsepower in the battle of the drop-top pony cars.
A 1969 Chevrolet Camaro built as a pro-touring machine and nicknamed Piranha takes the most sought-after body style of the first generation and rebuilds almost everything underneath it. The final year of the first-gen Camaro is already the one everybody wants, which raises the stakes on every decision a builder makes. Read on to find out what pro touring actually requires and why these builds keep climbing at auction.
A 2010 Camaro SS left the factory with an LS3 rated at 426 horsepower. This widebody example claims 1,500 at the rear wheels, which means almost nothing inside the block is original and the fenders had to grow to keep the tires underneath it. Here is what GM actually shipped in 2010 and what it takes to more than triple it.
Chevrolet spent most of 1964 insisting it did not need a Mustang rival, then spent the next two years building one in a hurry. The 1967 Camaro arrived on an all-new F-body platform with everything from a 140-horsepower six to a 375-horsepower 396, plus a homologation special called the Z/28 that only 602 buyers ever received. Here is what made the first year the one collectors still chase hardest.