Back when I was still in High School I started to visit all the car hangouts. I kept seeing this orange Camaro driving around town. It was clean and simple. Orange on black buckets and Cragars all round (I hate those square ones)
. Looking back it may have had stock exhaust. When you put a lumpy cam in a big block to me it sounds like it is choking. Mopar Hemis in a Challenger or Cuda had the same type of sound. I mean 2 1/4" exhaust behind 425+HP is a bit of a joke. I always thought GM engineers had a bit of a sence of humour. Maybe they thought there isn't much of an exhaust system that we can design that head office will and still work on these high HP cars. I think they knew that most guys were going to replace the mufflers and probably the whole exhaust system anyway.
Speaking of exhaust systems we sure did some back yard work in our driveways in those days. We had about 20 guys in our group and everyone had a piece of equipment that they shared. One guy had a welder, another had a tire machine and so on. I remember going over to my buddies house to help him put chambered pipes on his L78 Nova. I'm not sure which coins we used. I think they were quarters that we used to fill in the gaps between the head pipe and the chambered pipe. About 5 guys showed up and even after everyone chipped in we still ran out of quarters and had to raid my buddies little brother's piggy bank.LMAO. After a few beers and a handfull of quarters it was done. Of course all the jokes were flying and we were like a bunch of kids laughing our heads off. One guy said any power you picked up will not be enough to overcome the 200 #s of weld you used.lol.
So I couldn't understand why this car had no SS or 396 emblems to show it was a special model. All I did know was that I wanted it. The owners name was Angelo Colangelo. The only reason I remembered his name was that it rimed. My father was a manager of The Beer Store and he set me up with the stores bank manager. He more or less told me if I saved half the money that he would lend me the other half.
So much for that idea.It wasn't easy but I moved on and bought another Camaro. I figured I would never see the orange one again. One night hanging around Harveys a buddy of mine drives in with this orange Camaro. My buddy was a used car salesman. I knew the car right away.This was in 1972 and the car had changed hands a couple of times. Someone had blown the original motor. Ya. I know. Too bad. Back then the car hadn't reached a cult following and not yet a valueable collectable. People didn't identify the car as a COPO. It was a 427 Camaro. The car didn't sound the same as the last time I heard it 2 years ago. Who ever blew the 427 up had replaced it with a brand new crate open chamber LS7. Just for laughs they also replaced the 4.10s with 5.38s!!! To say the car was a handfull on the street was an under statement. On top of all that it was still a 4 SPD! Who ever owned the car when all these mods were done was not a nickel and dimer. The car had the best of everything and was built right. Other then all this someone had also painted the car blue.
So just to keep things interesting I bought the car. Without a serious tire a 340 Swinger could have beat this car. The car was dangerous to anyone who did not respect this kind of power. You couldn't nail this thing when ever you wanted to with real street tires. You had to get into the right mind set. Sit back in the seat and tighten up your seat belt. 1st gear was just not useable on the street. Even second was nuts and don't even think about a power shift. On a good road 3rd gear might hook but don't count on it.
A friend of mine knew the car and told me he saw the car run some low 11 second passes and had gone 11.1. The rear end was a stock 12 bolt except for the gear. It was guarantied the car would break an axle after 4 passes at the track with slicks on. The owner at that time would always have a couple of new axles with him when he went to the track. No idea why he didn't just buy after market axles he would scribe a line right down the length of the axle and check to see if the line had moved. If it had it was time to change that axle.
Gas was getting expensive and hard to find and with a 5.38 gear, 12.50 to 1 pistons, and a big cam, the car wasn't very streetable. I was also more interested in the Vega at the time so I built a low compression BBC with 3.73 gears. I drove it to the track and it ran low 12s in full street trim and pump gas.