Every end has a beginning, and this is it: an empty black husk of a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro that traveled six decades and tens of thousands of miles to arrive at its new home.
Indeed this car lived a full life before it rolled into the Snoqualmie, Washington, shop where it’ll transform from an empty vessel to the stuff of hell-raising lap-turning redneck fantasy.
Welcome to Camaro vs. World, a build series wherein an empty husk becomes a Trans-Am inspired road car for turnin' laps, burnin' tires, and haulin' ass. Amen.
My partner in the project, Levi, received the car in a trade from his father, who picked up the car from a winemaker in Yakima, WA.
The winemaker’s wife was a drag racer and for years she ran the car at the local strip. God knows how many times this Camaro ripped passes, but the scars of a life well-lived are all that’s left to bear that history, visible in the hammered-out wheel wells and a thousand tiny jagged scars to the underbody.
At some point under their stewardship, the winemaker and his wife added custom pin-striping that’d look right at home on a Kobe Bryant tribute banner. Combined with a splash of blue on the car's tail, it's a livery fit for the play pen of some grimy disgraced fast-food chain.
Welcome to McDingles, can I take your order?
I find it oddly charming.
Of course, the Seventies hooptie chic coats every corner of the black pleather interior. It should be noted the seats, panels, and dash are not original, but they are in remarkable shape. These pristine elements will be sold to someone with a specific kind of taste, swapped out for more purposeful seats and door panels, and a racier dash with the perfect three-spoke steering wheel.
You won’t have missed the hole in the Camaro’s hood either, carved crudely by an ancient sawzall. That hole once made way for the carb’d stack of some proud chromed-up thunderbastard that Levi’s dad kept in the trade. I think it's in a boat now.
Instead, our Camaro’s nose sits up like a bird dog at proud attention, not an ounce of weight sagging at its front springs.
That stance only hints at endless possibilities.
So what goes into that big hole in the hood? Therein lies the rub, the soul of the project itself. It’s a question fundamental to that endpoint I mentioned at the start of the piece.
To get the Camaro moving, we’ll select from the short blocks on hand in Levi’s shop. Our quorum of two points to an LS2 build that won’t need much beyond the parts and accessories lying around, plus a simple electronic ignition+carb setup just to get this project moving, which may graduate to a full EFI setup in time.
The end goal, however, fills its vast lungs via carburetors, spits anger from a pair of side pipes, and revs to the moon. This will take far more time, research, and expertise to accomplish. If you want a hint at the displacement: think Trans-Am. And not the Hasselhoff kind.
But first I think it’s best to get this Camaro moving under its own power simply, with the parts at hand. That'll allow us to improve the car on a holistic level, rather than slogging through logistics of sourcing and building an end-game engine while the brakes, chassis, aesthetics, and wheel/tire package go neglected.
In the next part of our journey, we’ll cover the inspiration driving the project. Our guiding light ensures this Camaro will not have the polish of a Chip Foose creation; It will not betray classic aesthetics by rolling on 18-inch chrome wheels like every modern ProTouring stallion; Nor shall it be enslaved to the scorn of nostalgia.
It will have attitude and character and a feeling of authenticity above all else. That I promise. Stay tuned.
