ZL-1 Race cars

[GMH454]

Hope this comes through its my first attempt at a photo. Hopefully its Bob Janes ZL-1.Will save info until it comes up.
Wish me luck (computer illiterate Terry)

[GMH454]

Put this up as we had been discussing Don's Sebring car. I believe the opinon is that
Don's car was not a "factory" ZL-1. I believe Bob's was (or that's what he told me).
Car won the Australian production car championship for two years. Was eventually
effectively banned as Cams the sports ruling body put a engine cap of 6 litres on the class (If you can't beat them ban them)on the interests of fairer competion. Car still was campaigned for many years but what happened to it through that time is TOO painful to discuss. Have you ever seen a REAR engined powered Camaro.
It is especially memorable as its main opposition was one of the KAR KRAFT mustangs.(I think). Anyway Ford built 7 special Boss 302s for the Trans am. 6 were team cars and this was a spare given to Moffatt. It was supposed to dominate our series. Ford obviously didn't think of the ZL-1.
Very close racing from these two cars, though according to Bob and his team members it was not as close as it looked. They always felt they had the mustang.
Have you ever looked at the racing bosses and wonderd what they did to drop the noses down so low?
Also I forgot where I come from. The first photo should have been captioned with.
JoeC call that a Camaro race car......This is a CAMARO RACE CAR. (with apologies to Mick Dundee)
Terry

[GMH454]

Joe, last race for the 1971 season. Jane won it by the margin of .6 of a second with the victory giving him the championship. Car came from Rathman Chevrolet (?) in Florida. Jane bought two. One was supposed to have been drag raced but I can't find any record of it. Jane contacted Chevrolet about the cars and they chased them up for him.
Car ran 4 wheel discs. It was'nt until the next season that CAMS realised it was a Z28
only option and made him change. Won 1972 again anyway.
Have other photos will try to drag them out this weekend. Also Moffats Mustang. A hell of a car. Outran Jane when they both turned up at the drags, as a joke.
The photo by the way is from Australian Motor Racing Annual 1972.

[JoeC]

Terry - If my information is correct, Jim Rathmann Chevrolet in Melbourne FL. sold two ZL1 Camaros. ZL1 # 33 a Hugger Orange 4sp and ZL1 # 52 a LeManns blue TH400 car. I have read that both went to Australia and the # 52 ZL1 was drag raced many years by the original owner. That picture you posted may be the other car still with it's original color.
I have a picture of a 1968 Camaro race car that was sponsored by Jim Rathmann Chevrolet. On a side note, Jim Rathmann was the Indy 500 winner in 1960 and also drove the 1969 Indy 500 Camaro Pace car.

[Belair62]

It's interesting how many of these old dealers were into Hi-Po for years. Jim Rathman sponsored a 62 409-380 HP Belair ,white/gold driven by Rex White in the 62 Nascar Grand National races.Kind of an obscure little fact but......

[GMH454]

Joe what is the source for the photos. Is that the Daytona 1969.I guess they ran them as Z28s. When you factor in the huge amount of rebody updates and paint changes the number of race cars start to shrink dramatically.
Yes this orange ZL-1 is 33#.
I have heard the storey that the owner ran the other car in drags for years, but facts at this stage don't back it up.

Firstly Bob Jane was a roundy roundy racer. Won our most prestigous production car championship about 5 times. As a business man and owner of two of Australia's major motor sport complex's his company just closed down competitive drag racing at those venues. Get the idea. I don't think Bob likes Drag racing.

Secondly he only had the two engines from the ZL-1s. He lunched one engine during the two years of campainging the orange car and they "borrowed" the engine from the Blue car. The blue one therefore only had a ZL-1 block for less than 2 years. They stuck a 350 in it and it may have raced with that.

Thirdly I had the luck to browse through our only drag racing newspaper at the offices of the publisher when researching my car (storey for another time)looked through 1967 to 1975 and the only ZL-1 photo I saw I will put up on the weekend. It was the same meeting that a group of circuit racers attended including Moffat and THE Boss 302. Matter of fact almost no camaro cars raced. Our Monaros have the same wheel base were lighter and were factory fitted with small block chevies.

Sorry to go on but I have had Americans tell me about Jane for a while, only talked to him once, he is not a well man, gave him a mag with a ZL-1 advert (you probably know the one) could'nt believe that I was'nt trying to sell it, he gave me two huge autographed posters by return mail. Neat guy.

[JoeC]

Nice picture Terry. Do you know what year it was taken?
I found another picture of a 1969 Camaro Yenko race car. It appears to be the same car as the 1968 # 11 Camaro and #5 Sebring car but was reskined as a 69. The roof stripes appear to be the same and looks like a large Yenko crest on the side but I cannot read the letters. When the Camaros were reskined they just changed the nose clip and quarters leaving the greenhouse and trunk. The # 5 Sebring ZL1 equipped racer appears to be the # 9 Camaro with new paint on the ZL1. Both have a pass side only vent window. All three of these Yenko race cars appear to have the same side mirror and "Starsky and Hutch" light on the roof. I believe Don used this light to ID his car to the pit crew (at night)in an endurance race and also as one of his jokes. Don was also known to have big air horns on some of his race cars.

[JoeC]

Terry, sounds like you are doing a great job working on the Australian ZL1 history. I hope you can keep digging and find more info. The # 11 and # 9 Yenko Camaro Race car pictures are from a great book by Martyn L. Schorr called "Chevrolet" and is part of his "Quicksilver Supercar Series" copyright 1982. The Sebring Yenko Camaro with the ZL1 engine was in Corvette News Jun/July 1969. I had thought the # 11 1968 Camaro was the car that Yenko won the 1969 Daytona Citrus 250 with but Tom said it was a 1969 Camaro with the number 11.

[Chevy454]

Here are some more pictures we found. The first one may explain why we have so many pictures of cars, and most of the time they have different numbers on them. As you can see, the circle is left blank so any number can be applied. The second picture is a bit of a mystery, as the only thing I know about it is that on the back of the picture, the only thing written is "ZL-1".




[Edited by Chevy454 (02-15-2001 at 01:54 PM).]