1967 Chevrolet Camaro SS: The Year GM Proved It Could Play Muscle Car Too

A 1967 Chevrolet Camaro SS could leave the factory with a 295-horsepower 350 or a 375-horsepower 396, and the difference between them matters far more than anything the badges on the fenders suggest. The SS package brought genuine hardware, including upgraded suspension and cooling alongside the higher-output V8, rather than just the bumblebee stripe. Read on for what each engine actually ran, how to tell an RS from an SS, and why documentation matters more than the model year.

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An open hood at a car show is an invitation, and on a first-generation Camaro it is also a test. The body tells you the era and the badges tell you the trim, and neither one tells you the thing that actually determines what the car is worth or what it will do to a set of rear tires on a warm evening. Chevrolet offered the 1967 Super Sport with engines separated by eighty horsepower and a great deal more than that in temperament. What is sitting under that hood is the only question that genuinely matters, and the answer is not always the one the fender is claiming.

Why the Open Hood Is the Only Honest Answer

Badges, stripes, and hood louvers are all reproduced and freely available, which means none of them constitute evidence. The claims worth trusting on any first-generation Camaro are the cowl tag, the VIN with its engine and plant codes, and the casting and suffix numbers stamped on the block itself. Clone cars vastly outnumber genuine Super Sports at this point, and many of them are honestly represented as tribute builds. The problem arises with the ones that are not, and thirty minutes with a reference guide is the only reliable defense a buyer has.

A Car Built in a Considerable Hurry

Chevrolet developed the Camaro under the internal code name Panther and launched it on September 29 of 1966 as a 1967 model, roughly two and a half years after the Mustang had defined and then dominated the segment. The compressed timeline shows in a few places, but the fundamentals were right: a 108.1-inch wheelbase, a unibody structure with a bolt-on front subframe, and a full range of engines from an economical six through to a big block. Chevrolet built 220,906 of them in that first model year, which counts as a successful response by any standard.

The SS Was Hardware, Not a Stripe Kit

The Super Sport option was a hardware package rather than an appearance one, which is the distinction people frequently miss. It brought a higher-output V8 as standard, heavy-duty suspension components, upgraded cooling capable of surviving the engine it was paired with, and then the visual identification everyone recognizes: the bumblebee stripe wrapping the nose, simulated hood louvers, and SS badging on the grille, fenders, gas cap, and horn button. Roughly 34,411 Camaros were built with the SS option in 1967, a healthy figure that has been effectively multiplied several times over by subsequent recreations.

L48: The 350 That Debuted in This Car

The base SS engine was the L48, a 350 cubic-inch small block rated at 295 horsepower, and it holds a distinction worth knowing. The 1967 Camaro SS was the first application of the 350 anywhere in the General Motors lineup, making this car the debut of an engine family that would remain in production in one form or another for decades. It is a genuinely good engine in this context: strong enough to be quick, light enough over the front axle that the car still steers, and durable enough that plenty are still running on original internals.

The 396 That Arrived Partway Through the Year

The 396 did not arrive at the start of the model year. Chevrolet added it partway through 1967, offering the L35 at 325 horsepower and, later still, the L78 at 375. Adding roughly 150 pounds over the front axle changed the car’s balance considerably, trading the small block’s willingness to change direction for straight-line authority the 350 simply could not match. Buyers who wanted a road course car and buyers who wanted a drag strip car were effectively being sold two different vehicles wearing identical badges, which was very much intentional.

L78 and the Aluminum-Head Cars Above It

Above the L78 sat the L89 option, a pair of aluminum cylinder heads bolted to the same short block. Chevrolet rated the combination at the same 375 horsepower, which was almost certainly understated, but the actual benefit was weight: roughly seventy-five pounds removed from precisely the place where a big-block Camaro least wanted it. The option was expensive, ordered by very few buyers, and verified L89 cars now sit at the top of the first-generation market. Claims about them substantially outnumber documented examples, as tends to happen with rare option codes.

What the Numbers Actually Ran

Period road tests provide useful reality checks against the numbers that circulate online. L78 SS396 cars with appropriate rear gearing recorded zero to sixty times right around six seconds and quarter-mile passes in the mid fourteens at roughly 99 to 101 mph. SS350 cars were meaningfully slower, closer to eight seconds to sixty with quarter-mile times in the mid fifteens. Both were quick for 1967 and both would still be considered brisk today, but the frequently repeated claim of a five-and-a-half second big block belongs to a later era of tires and traction, not to this one.

RS, SS, and the Combination People Confuse

The Rally Sport package is where most misidentification happens. RS was purely an appearance option, bringing hidden headlights behind vacuum-operated doors, revised taillights, and additional exterior trim, with no mechanical content whatsoever. It could be combined with the SS to produce an RS/SS car, which is exactly what the 1967 Indianapolis 500 pace car was: an RS/SS convertible. A great many cars are described as SS models when they are RS cars, sometimes through genuine confusion, and the difference in value between the two is substantial.

The First-Year Flaws Chevrolet Fixed Next

The first year had real shortcomings, and Chevrolet addressed them quickly. Single-leaf rear springs allowed severe wheel hop under big-block torque, which was corrected for 1968 by staggering the rear shock absorbers and fitting multi-leaf springs to high-output cars. The 1968 model also dropped the front vent windows in favor of the Astro Ventilation flow-through system and gained federally mandated side marker lights. Anyone comparing a 1967 against a 1968 should understand that the later car is objectively better sorted, whatever the market has decided about desirability.

Why 1967 Still Commands a Premium

Despite that, 1967 cars generally command a premium, and the reasoning is mostly about being first. The vent windows and the cleaner front-end treatment appeal to a particular kind of buyer, and first-year status carries weight in almost every collector market regardless of engineering merit. That said, documentation moves prices far more than the model year does. A verified L78 1968 car will outrun and outsell an undocumented 1967 SS350 every time, and any buyer weighing the two should be looking at paperwork before looking at the calendar.

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