69 Camaro Drag Car

[Charles]

Thanks Stefano for the details. It is unclear if the Al Olster Camaro began as a 396 or a 427. The Camaro had SS emblems and "427" was also put on the cowl hood. Al Olster was the runner-up with Dave Strickler in the WCS Super Stock points in 1970. When two of the Jenkins cars went to Dallas for the finals they had installed the drive train from Al Olster's car in the Strickler SS/J car. The NHRA officials would not allow Dave Strickler to race the car because he had not run an automatic in the car at any of the WCS meets. Bill Jenkins ran into the same problem with his SS/C Camaro that arrived with a trick automatic transmission. For the same reason he could not run with the automatic setup. He converted the car back to a 4 speed but could not come close to the record that had been set by Arlen Vanke. While Dave Strickler had gone 10.97 there was the potential to go even faster because the chassis setup for the 4 speed SS/J car was not the same as Al's automatic Camaro chassis setup.
Later 1970 would turned out to be a pretty good year for Dave Strickler when he became the first Pro Stock Champion in Division One. He accomplished this with the spare Jenkins Competition 1970 1/2 Camaro. Jenkins ended up tied for fourth place with John Petrie.