The 1rst 1967 Camaro Z28 produced by Chevrolet & Engine Sound

Jon Mello’s 1967 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 isn’t just an early example of Chevrolet’s Trans-Am homologation special — it’s documented as the very first one built. Filmed at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, the Gold Z/28 wears its correct 302-cubic-inch small-block after a decade-long, period-correct restoration meant to undo years of hard use. Only around 602 Z/28s were built for 1967, and this one sits at the very start of that list. Watch to hear the story — and the engine — for yourself.

Every legendary nameplate has to start somewhere, and that starting point is almost never treated like history in the making — it’s treated like just another car, driven hard, raced, and often discarded once something faster comes along. Somewhere in the fall of 1966, one gold Camaro rolled off the line wearing an option code that didn’t exist in most buyers’ vocabulary yet: Z/28. Decades later, at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Rosemont, Illinois, its owner explained on camera exactly why this particular car isn’t just an early Z/28 — it’s the first one Chevrolet ever built. Whether it should have survived at all is the more interesting question.

The Option Code Nobody Understood Yet

When the Z/28 package appeared on Chevrolet order sheets for the 1967 model year, it wasn’t marketed as a headline performance option — it was a homologation special built quietly to satisfy SCCA Trans-Am racing rules, pairing a 302-cubic-inch small-block (built by combining a 283 crank with a 327 block to dodge the series’ 305-cubic-inch limit) with heavy-duty suspension and quick-ratio steering. Chevrolet built barely 602 Z/28s for 1967, and dealers had to know to even ask for the package by its RPO code. This particular car, finished in Gold with the correct engine and drivetrain, is documented as the very first of that tiny run — a footnote in Chevrolet’s own production records that its current owner, Jon Mello, has spent years verifying and preserving rather than simply claiming.

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Ten Years to Undo Decades of Hard Use

Mello has owned the car since 2000, and according to the video, the Camaro didn’t come to him in showroom condition — first-year Z/28s were built to be driven and raced, not babied, and this one carried the wear to prove it. What followed was a decade-long, period-correct restoration aimed at returning the car to exactly how it left the factory rather than upgrading it with modern conveniences. That distinction matters to serious collectors: a correct restoration on a car this significant is worth dramatically more, and far harder to execute, than a resto-mod built for comfort. Viewers in the comments who’ve handled 1967-69 Camaros themselves were quick to recognize just how demanding that kind of accuracy actually is.

Why the Z/28 Almost Didn’t Get a Second Chance

Homologation specials like the Z/28 were built in tiny numbers specifically because they existed to qualify a car for racing, not to sell to casual buyers, which means most of Chevrolet’s earliest examples were used exactly as intended — raced hard, crashed, and often quietly scrapped once teams moved on to faster equipment. One commenter on the video, a self-described flagman who worked highway construction in the summer of 1968, describes waving through one of the very first Z/28s he ever saw and instantly falling for small-block Chevy power because of it. Stories like that illustrate how many of these cars simply vanished from ordinary use long before anyone thought to preserve them as milestones.

A 302 Built to Rev, Not to Idle

The Z/28’s 302 wasn’t about outright displacement — it was a deliberately oversquare, high-revving engine tuned to make its power near 6,000-7,000 rpm, which is part of why the video spends real time simply letting the engine run and rev at the show rather than rushing through specs. Viewers who commented on the sound weren’t exaggerating; a correctly built solid-lifter 302 has a mechanical, almost angry cadence that four-barrel carburetion and factory exhaust only amplify. For a car built to satisfy Trans-Am rules, that soundtrack was never an accident — it was the byproduct of an engine designed purely to win races, sold to the public because SCCA required enough of them to exist.

The Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals Stage

The setting matters here too. MCACN, held annually in Rosemont, Illinois, has become one of the most respected venues in the country for exactly this kind of car — original, numbers-correct, and documented muscle cars rather than modified show pieces. Getting invited to display at MCACN, let alone being singled out by a well-known channel like My Car Story with Lou Costabile, is itself a form of validation from a community that takes production history seriously. It’s the kind of stage where a claim like first Z/28 built doesn’t go unchallenged — it gets scrutinized by exactly the people who would know.

What the Comments Reveal About Camaro Loyalty

The response under this video says as much about the car’s significance as the restoration does. A viewer who once owned a ’68 Rally Sport calls the ’67 his favorite of every Camaro generation, at 71 years old, still saying he wants one. Another describes trying to track down his mother’s long-sold 1968 Rally Sport, offering to mortgage his house to get it back. That kind of emotional attachment isn’t unusual around early Camaros, but it underscores why a documented first-of-production example carries weight far beyond its horsepower figures — it’s tied to memories that predate most of the people watching.

Collector Value of a Verified First

Numbers-matching first-year Z/28s already command strong money at auction, typically landing well into six figures depending on documentation and condition, but a verified first-production example pushes into rarer territory entirely — closer to how collectors treat a first-of-run prototype than an ordinary rare option car. Provenance like Mello’s, built on ownership records and Chevrolet’s own build sequence, is exactly what separates a genuinely historic car from one that simply claims to be special. It’s also why this particular restoration prioritized period accuracy over any kind of performance upgrade — altering the car in any way would undercut the very thing that makes it valuable.

A Finite, Vanishing Breed

The Z/28 package itself only lasted through 1969 in its original first-generation form before Chevrolet reworked the Camaro entirely for 1970, which means every first-gen Z/28 — and especially this one — represents a genuinely finite chapter in Chevrolet’s performance history rather than an ongoing model line. That scarcity is compounded by how many of these cars were used up entirely in period, between amateur racers chasing SCCA glory and street racers simply looking for the fastest small-block Chevy money could buy off a dealer lot. Surviving examples that can trace an unbroken, documented history all the way back to their build sheet, the way this Gold ’67 can, are the exception rather than the rule, which is exactly why a crowd gathers every time Jon Mello brings this particular Camaro out in public.

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