Posts Tagged: El Camino
A crew filming for “Texas Streets” set out to capture a real test hit from Kamikaze, the big-block, nitrous-fed El Camino known to Street Outlaws fans — no barriers, no safety net, no staged police cameo. What they got instead was a nasty, fiery pass followed by an unscripted visit from actual police after the noise woke up the neighborhood. See how a supposedly routine test hit turned into one of the rawest moments the channel has caught on camera.
CBoysTV took the supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi out of their own Challenger Hellcat and built it into a last-generation Chevy El Camino — 707 horsepower in a car whose factory V8 made around 150. Three million people have now watched it drift, smoke tires, and line up against real muscle cars. The most repeated comment under the video: it looks like Chevrolet built it that way.
This red 1970 El Camino SS wears its black stripe and vinyl top the way Chevrolet intended: parked among the muscle cars it was built to run with, not tucked away in a garage. Underneath the truck bed is a full Chevelle SS drivetrain, and across five model years Chevrolet pushed it from a 325-horsepower newcomer to the 450-horsepower LS6 454 before emissions rules caught up with it. Read on to see how the numbers changed year by year — and why the VIN tag matters more than the badge.
Chevrolet took a two-door Chevelle, chopped it behind the B-pillar, and created a truck that didn’t look or drive like one. The second-generation El Camino grew from a mild six-cylinder hauler into a genuine SS396 performer by 1967. Read on to see how a utility vehicle ended up with a 375-horsepower option.
The 1973 El Camino was the biggest one Chevrolet had ever built, and it arrived carrying federally mandated bumpers that nobody had designed the styling around. Underneath sat a raft of genuinely thoughtful engineering: a wider track with deliberately mismatched camber for crowned roads, computer-designed coil springs matched to each vehicle, standard front discs, and a 22-gallon tank. Read on for what the fourth generation got right in the worst possible decade for performance.
Chevrolet had an El Camino prototype drawn up in 1952 and then let it sit untouched for seven years. What finally pushed it into production was watching Ford get rewarded for the same idea. The car that resulted wore Bel Air trim over a Biscayne interior, carried a corrugated steel bed floor, and in its hottest form ran a 14-second quarter with a tri-carb 348 under the hood. Two model years later it was gone. Read on to find out what killed it.
Chevrolet’s fifth-generation El Camino, built from 1979 through 1987, had to survive an energy crisis that punished anything with a big V8, and it did so with a shrinking body, a maze of trim names, and even a diesel V8 option that saved fuel but earned a reputation for expensive repairs. Read on to find out how a car-truck hybrid balanced performance and economy through one of the toughest decades for American muscle.
Chevrolet rated the 1970 Chevelle SS 454’s LS6 engine at 450 horsepower, but nobody who dyno-tested one believed the number — Super Chevy Magazine’s own testing pointed to something closer to 500. It was the most powerful engine Chevrolet ever put in a Chevelle, offered for exactly one year before EPA rules ended the experiment. Only 4,475 LS6 Chevelles were built in 1970, and just 137 are verified on today’s national registry. Read on for what made this one-year-only big block so different from every 454 that came after it.
David Zuber brought his supercharged 1965 Chevrolet El Camino to the Cleveland Auto Show, and the new metal on the floor barely got a glance from him. The El Camino’s story runs from a short-lived 1959 debut on Chevrolet’s full-size platform to a Chevelle-based reinvention that turned it into a genuine muscle car in a truck’s clothing. Its factory engine lineup topped out well below what Zuber’s build produces today. Read on to find out what it takes to push a 1965 coupe-utility into 900-horsepower territory.