<VV> re: VP Camaro

[Tony Underwood]

At 08:30 hours 06/06/2005, jwcorvair at aol.com wrote:
>I know this might sound a bit funny, but I really like plain Jane machines 
>like the 67 Camero that Tony's brother bought. I always wanted an early 
>Camero with a straight six and a three speed. I didn't know they came with 
>a bench seat, though I did see an early Firebird that had a bench seat. 
>The seat had a relief in the front edge to make room for the floor mounted 
>shifter.
>


Back When, there was a Camaro sold by Dave Hallman Chevy here in 
Roanoke.  It was a '69 ZL-1, forest green with metallic green interior, 
dogdish hubcaps, TH-400 auto with shifter on the column, and a bench 
seat.   Under the hood was of course the aluminum 427 engine.    They made 
a big deal of it, ran ads on the radio etc.   Seems somebody had ordered 
the car ala COPO and left a deposit, car arrived, buyer had vanished never 
to be heard from again or so I was told.    The dealership sat on the car 
for almost a year waiting for the buyer to come get it, finally (summer of 
'70) they put the car up for sale.    Seems it was being hawked for ~8600 
bucks, and they offered to sell either the engine alone for "x" number of 
dollars or they'd sell the car body sans engine/transmission, either way, 
just to get rid of it.    Somebody bought it and trailered it away.   Not 
sure what became of it after that, not unlikely that the car might still 
around somewhere unless it got cut up/modified for dragracing purposes 
etc.    It was a cheapo-bigtime body, with the most exotic engine 
available.    Sleeper.

Ma Mopar sold a lot of sleepers like that in the early '60s, dirt-poor 
sedan body car with interior furnished in early poverty as well, but 
outfitted with HD suspension, 400+hp engine, traction aids, HD cooling 
system, big brakes, stiff rear end gears, and usually a beefed up 
Torqueflite automatic so as to follow a feeble attempt to keep the 
driveline in one piece.   When fitted with slicks and open headers, these 
cars would sometimes run  ~11 second quarter mile times (and still do in 
Stock dragrace classes).    A lot of these Q-Ships wound up running the 
streets, like the SS 426 Max-Wedge Savoys and Belvederes which practically 
reinvented and then owned SS/ dragracing classes, followed later by the '68 
Hemicuda and Hemidart A body cars which ran in SS/A-A.   Incidentally, a 
'68 Barracuda holds the world record in SS/AA to this day, 8.53 time at 
153.8 mph.    (had to grab the magazine to check).    By the way, the early 
'60s Mopars with the Max-Wedge engines also hold the national record for 
SS/B, a '64 Plymouth Savoy, which is an ultra-stripper Q-Ship sleeper, no 
chrome other than badges and bumpers and door handles, turned the quarter 
mile in 9.08 at 147 mph... and THIS is a car you could hang mufflers on and 
drive on the streets.   That is danged fast.

That's a factory produced stock steel body car with doors that slam and 
seats inside and working lights and a stock displacement engine with 
factory supplied part # carbs and factory stock camshaft and burns pump 
gasoline.   ...and people today rant about the horsepower that modern 
engines can make, compared to engines from just a decade ago.    This old 
Plymouth and its engine are both 41 years old.    Of course it's tweaked to 
the limit, obviously.


I can remember when Top Fuel dragsters were damned hard pressed to run that 
fast.    Some of these old SS cars are producing close to *1000* horsepower 
from a 426 engine burning gasoline, and that's a wedge head engine and not 
the SS Hemi which can dyno out at ~1200 or more on a good day.



I can also recall attending nationally sanctioned dragraces (at Bristol, 
Spring Nats and fall Sports Nats) and watching Corvairs compete in Stock 
classes, headed to the pits to check some of them more closely.   I saw 
short tires/slicks, velocity stacks on 140 engines with quickly-removable 
fan belts (spring-loaded idler pulley) for the money run, and of course all 
the other stuff inside where it's not visible.   I saw a '62 Monza coupe 
that was turning 12's in a Modified class, had 140 heads on what I was told 
was a stock displacement 145" engine, sounded like it was turning 8000 rpm 
off the line.  He eventually was disqualified on a sort of "technicality" 
("automatic" redlight) by deep-staging and automatically tripped the reds 
upon leaving the line even though he did NOT leave early, and still outran 
his opponent even though he drew an automatic DQ.   Moral of story:  Do NOT 
deep-stage.   Another Vair was running a Stock class and turning some very 
respectable times with a 145" engine and a Powerglide, had the shortest 
slicks you could imagine in ultra wide 13" wheels painted white so you 
could see the welds, had what appeared to be hand-made headers that snaked 
out from under the engine so close to the ground that if the car squatted 
much at all they would have scraped, and did, made sparks when the car left 
the line, must have had a modified converter since the engine revved pretty 
hard as he launched.    I think this car got put on the trailer when he ran 
a Camaro *that he had to spot* and got beat by a tiny fraction...  kinda 
silly watching a nationally sanctioned Spring Nationals dragrace and seeing 
a Corvair having to spot a Camaro almost a half-second.    The Vairs made a 
credible showing at this race, and I was quite proud to see them doing 
well...  the best was a white '65 140 Monza that actually made it to the 
class Finals and ran heads-up for the money run against a '60 Chevy 
Impala...  no spot, both cars ran heads-up.   They left the line like they 
were stapled together and that's how they tripped the lights, almost 
exactly side by side and they BOTH broke out, the Vair by a tiny slight bit 
more than the Impala, and the "first or worst" rule was brought into play 
and the Impala was given the win in class, and the Vair got put on the 
trailer.   Bummer...  I was really pulling for the Monza and to see it lose 
by such a tiny amount of breakout (even though technically the Vair got to 
the finish line FIRST) was disappointing.    Times were around 14 seconds 
flat and trap speeds of ~98 mph.   Really respectable for both the 140hp 
Monza and the 283 V8 Impala.

The following year's Spring Nationals saw a single solitary Corvair in the 
field.   It did Ok for a few rounds and was eliminated, ran well, but got 
no respect... a few laughs in the crowd when the announcer managed to 
insert "Nader" into his comments as the Vair staged.

The previous year I'd asked a couple of guys competing at Bristol about 
running turbo Vairs in dragracing and I was told that the rules at the time 
did NOT favor Vairs with turbos.   I'd liked to have seen a well 
thought-out turbocharged dragrace Vair running in a national competition, 
just to see what might be done with one.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that those chances are long gone today, what 
with rule changes and revamped tech specs and "specialty" cars like 
Corvairs having been simply factored out of the running by tech specs which 
favor modern cars (for the most part, unless of course you're running SS/A 
or B classes).   ;)


tony..