 |
A 1968 Chevrolet Camaro street machine carries the second-year styling changes most people miss, and underneath there was an SS package that could be ordered with a big block strong enough to end arguments at a stoplight. Chevrolet built well over two hundred thousand Camaros that year and changed almost nothing, which turned out to be the right call. Read on to find out what separates a 1968 from the car that launched the nameplate.
Chevrolet restyled the Camaro completely for 1969, then retired the body after a single season when the second-generation car arrived. Under the badge, the SS 396 could be ordered in three different states of tune, topping out with a solid-lifter 375-horsepower L78, plus an aluminum-head option that cost more than 700 dollars and added no advertised power at all. Read on to find out why that made sense.
Ford built this Boss 302 Mustang to satisfy SCCA Trans-Am homologation rules, which required at least 6,500 production copies before the race car could compete. Ford ended up building 7,014 for 1970, exceeding the quota by 514 cars, each carrying a fortified 302-cubic-inch V8 making 290 horsepower and a suspension tuned for road-course duty. Period road tests clocked the quarter mile in 14.9 seconds at 93.4 mph. Ford dropped the model after just two years on the market.
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.
That exhaust note did not come from the base engine. In 1973 Chevrolet sold two entirely different 350 cubic-inch V8s in the Camaro, separated by one option box and a hundred horsepower, and the more serious one was built with four-bolt mains and a forged crank. This was also the last year the second-generation car wore its clean chrome front end before federal bumper rules changed it. Read on for what separated the two engines.
For the third January in a row, the Mustang outsold both the Camaro and the Challenger — even as all three pony cars posted some of their worst monthly numbers in years. The gap between first and third widened, not narrowed, during the slump. Here’s what the January 2017 numbers actually showed, and why a soft month didn’t tell the whole story.
The 1969 Camaro SS could be ordered with the 396 big block in three separate states of tune, and the difference between them shows up the instant the rear tires break loose. The top-spec L78 ran an 11:1 compression ratio and made 415 lb-ft of torque at just 3,600 rpm, in a car weighing roughly 3,790 pounds. Here is what actually separates the three engines, why RS and SS were never the same thing, and how to tell a real SS 396 from a tribute.
The 1969 Camaro SS 396 is remembered for sheet metal Chevrolet used for exactly one model year and then abandoned forever, but the argument that keeps collectors awake has nothing to do with the styling. Three separate states of tune wore the same SS 396 badge, and only one of them carried the solid-lifter L78. Roughly 13,970 big-block cars left the line, and telling them apart takes more than a glance. Read on to find out what actually separates them.
This short documentary traces the sixty-year rivalry between Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge, from the Mustang’s accidental creation of the pony car segment in 1964 through the Camaro’s 1967 response and the Challenger’s late arrival in 1970. It’s less about specs and more about how three companies turned a straight-line horsepower race into an entire cultural identity. Watch to see how the story connects to the muscle cars still being built today.
Mark Weddle’s 1968 Camaro answers to “The Janitor,” and the nickname describes what happens to the field rather than any modesty on his part. The car has been rebuilt from a small-block-and-nitrous combination to a Torrez Performance 406 running a single Precision 106mm turbocharger, chasing consistent 5.40-second eighth-mile passes on no-prep surfaces. Here is why the turbo conversion mattered more than the horsepower number, and what a swap like that actually costs beyond the turbo itself.
Chevrolet had less than a year to answer the Ford Mustang, and the car it rushed into showrooms for 1967 has now outlived the emergency that created it by nearly six decades. The first Camaro arrived with eight engines, two very different option packages, and a hidden-headlight trick that most buyers wanted more than they wanted stripes. Here is how a panic response became an icon almost overnight.
Chevrolet did not build the Z/28 to win a stoplight argument. It built it to satisfy a rulebook that capped racing engines at 5.0 liters, which is why engineers invented an entirely new 302 small block by mixing parts from two others. The 1968 car sharpened the formula with better suspension, a homologated cross-ram induction package, and back-to-back Trans-Am titles. Read on for what made the plainest-looking Camaro the most respected one.
Detailing a modern engine bay is easy; detailing a 1969 Camaro SS’s exposed carburetor, distributor, and ignition system without frying anything is another matter entirely. The Chemical Guys Detail Garage crew bags every vulnerable component before touching a hose, then works through a specific degreasing and drying sequence built for engines that predate sealed, water-resistant electronics by decades. It’s the kind of process viewers have since applied to their own numbers-matching Camaros. Watch how they pull it off without a single misfire.
Ford’s Mustang beat the Camaro and Challenger for a fifth straight month in March 2017, extending a streak to 27 wins in 29 months, but the raw sales totals hid a steep year-over-year decline. This piece unpacks the numbers behind that streak, why Camaro and Challenger were actually closing the gap underneath it, and what a winning streak built on a shrinking base actually signals.
Most show cars arrive on a trailer. This 1971 Camaro street machine drove 275 miles under its own power to reach the show field, with an LS swap under a hood that was never meant to hide it. Chevrolet built 114,630 Camaros that year, and only 4,862 of them were Z/28s. Read on to find out why a strike at the Norwood plant made 1971 the second-generation F-body’s real first year.