Early Camaro . . .
My friend Charlie very possibly bought the first Camaro sold to a private individual. In the fall of ‘66 he had recently graduated from high school and was working for his family’s roofing company. He was also a total motorhead and sometime street racer who was driving a ‘59 Corvette and could spot most any car on the road. One morning he was working on the roof of a Chevy dealer here in the San Fernando Valley with the rest of the roofing crew when he spied a load of new Chevies coming in from the Van Nuys plant just a few miles away. On the truck were two sporty looking cars he couldn’t place so at lunch break he wandered to the back lot and looked them over: they were two of the first Camaros ever built. One was a stripper with a bench seat and pie plate hubcaps while the other was a showroom queen with RS trim, bucket seats, vinyl top, a four speed trans and a hot 350 V8. During the ‘67 and ‘68 model years the 350 was made alongside the similar 327 but 350 availability was limited to a few high performance models, even the Corvette didn’t get the 350 until ‘69.
Charlie wanted the car really, really bad. The salesman said they couldn’t sell it for a week until the official introduction but he can be impatient and very persistent. By the end of the day they had agreed to take his Corvette in trade but wanted to rebate $200 back to him to let the Camaro sit on the showroom floor for a week. That was a lot of money for a roofer in 1966 but he had to have it that day and so drove it off the lot. He told me the first week with it was crazy, people came up to him at gas stations thinking it was the newly restyled ‘67 Mustang and freaked out when they saw it was a Chevy!
Charlie did a lot of engine mods and street raced the Camaro. Biggest problem he had was a weakness in the rear axle mounts. He ripped them out a few times the first year using cheater slicks. Each time he paid the tow truck driver to take the car home first so he could put stock tires back on before innocently showing up at the Chevy dealer for a warranty fix. They knew what he was up to but couldn’t prove it, finally after consulting Chevy engineers they received an OK to do some additional bracing at the rear. Charlie said some of the high performance ‘68s had this fix from the factory as other hard drivers had the same problem. He kept the car for several years and ultimately dropped a 427 in it for awhile that must have been a real bear. During the twenty years I've known Charlie he's had plenty of fast cars including several exotics but he still remembers that Camaro fondly as being a good fast car even in stock form.
My friend Charlie very possibly bought the first Camaro sold to a private individual. In the fall of ‘66 he had recently graduated from high school and was working for his family’s roofing company. He was also a total motorhead and sometime street racer who was driving a ‘59 Corvette and could spot most any car on the road. One morning he was working on the roof of a Chevy dealer here in the San Fernando Valley with the rest of the roofing crew when he spied a load of new Chevies coming in from the Van Nuys plant just a few miles away. On the truck were two sporty looking cars he couldn’t place so at lunch break he wandered to the back lot and looked them over: they were two of the first Camaros ever built. One was a stripper with a bench seat and pie plate hubcaps while the other was a showroom queen with RS trim, bucket seats, vinyl top, a four speed trans and a hot 350 V8. During the ‘67 and ‘68 model years the 350 was made alongside the similar 327 but 350 availability was limited to a few high performance models, even the Corvette didn’t get the 350 until ‘69.
Charlie wanted the car really, really bad. The salesman said they couldn’t sell it for a week until the official introduction but he can be impatient and very persistent. By the end of the day they had agreed to take his Corvette in trade but wanted to rebate $200 back to him to let the Camaro sit on the showroom floor for a week. That was a lot of money for a roofer in 1966 but he had to have it that day and so drove it off the lot. He told me the first week with it was crazy, people came up to him at gas stations thinking it was the newly restyled ‘67 Mustang and freaked out when they saw it was a Chevy!
Charlie did a lot of engine mods and street raced the Camaro. Biggest problem he had was a weakness in the rear axle mounts. He ripped them out a few times the first year using cheater slicks. Each time he paid the tow truck driver to take the car home first so he could put stock tires back on before innocently showing up at the Chevy dealer for a warranty fix. They knew what he was up to but couldn’t prove it, finally after consulting Chevy engineers they received an OK to do some additional bracing at the rear. Charlie said some of the high performance ‘68s had this fix from the factory as other hard drivers had the same problem. He kept the car for several years and ultimately dropped a 427 in it for awhile that must have been a real bear. During the twenty years I've known Charlie he's had plenty of fast cars including several exotics but he still remembers that Camaro fondly as being a good fast car even in stock form.
