My First Car

My first car was a bit different. I bought it brand new. I still have it. It is a 1974 Chevy Camaro Z28. It came stock with a 350 cid LT1 engine originally rated at 350 hp. It sits at my home with an actual 32,000 miles on it today.


I had plans for it when I ordered it. I specified no A/C, no power windows or locks and none of the bells and whistles that would weigh down what I knew would become a lean mean machine.



When people talk about it, they use words and phrases you don’t normally hear. Words like Holley, Edelbrock, Accell, Zoom, Hooker, Lakewood, TRW, Hurst, Crane, Crower and Mickey Thompson.


And phrases like Rock Crusher, Twelve Bolt Rear End, Locked Posi Axle, Explosion Blanket, 2.02 Fuelie Heads, 4 Bolt Mains, Forged Steel Crank And Rods, 50/50 Monroes, Dual Point Ignition, High Lift High Duration Cam and Triple Wound Valve Springs.





Tires all around are fifteen inches tall and fifteen inches wide. It has three piece oversized sway bars, and spoilers that are genuinely required, not just for decoration. There is a pressure plate in the clutch that had no diaphragm spring to umbrella (turn inside out from speed), instead it needs A-arms and coil springs (known as a Borg and Beck type) rated at 1800 pounds of pressure. The headers (a special exhaust system where each cylinder has it’s own equal length pipe) exit under the fenders and have the collector (the point where the individual pipes come together) outside of the car. A session on a Sun Dynamometer (a device for measuring horsepower) currently shows it to produce 500 horsepower at the rear wheels.

You see, I used to be a Motor Head (we have a chorus of ‘used to be?’ over here).


This was at a time when American Muscle Cars were capable of being modified. Back then, building up, or ‘souping up’ an engine meant wrenches, wicked cool parts, busted knuckles and elbow grease, not changing a computer chip. The banshee scream of a mouse motor (a small block Chevy engine, big blocks were called rat motors) turning eight thousand rpm would send a chill down your spine and force a smile that felt both good and slightly wrong at the same time. Just idling the car at a stoplight at one thousand rpm (as low as it will go) while the car rocks and bucks is impressive to watch and listen to. The lightning fast rise and fall of the tach tells you there is serious power and compression in that mill. There is no delay in a goose of this throttle; a jump from idle to four thousand rpm and back to idle takes only a second. The fact that gas stations are of no use to you because this thing won’t even consider attempting to run on the watered down lamp oil sold in those places, tells you that this is not your father‘s car. In a pinch, you can stop at an airport and get some 100LL aviation fuel, so long as you have a bottle of octane booster to add, as a 100 octane rating isn’t good enough, and needs to be bumped up to 108 octane to satisfy this beast. And lead is required as well, don’t even consider skipping that.


I used to place a $100 bill on the dashboard while stopped, and tell my passengers that if they could grab it before I was going 60 mph, it was theirs to keep. No one ever got it.




Zero to sixty time in this thing is two and a half seconds. And G-force at that kind of acceleration prevented you from reaching forward anyway. Ten second quarter mile times were even more impressive when you saw that this car was set up for road racing, not the drag strip. Even set up as it is, the front wheels stay off the ground through first, second and third gear. It has four gears.

There is a good reason for owning a machine such as this. And if I ever figure out what it is, I’ll let you know.

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FOOTNOTE: These photos are of the actual car, sitting at my house. They were taken just a few minutes ago.