A Long List Of Cool Options

I realize that I've been slacking on the articles a bit, but it's time to supercharger this whole article writing idea, with that said let's get right down to business. The Camaro, has been a long running favorite of the muscle car crowd, and for a good reason, the Camaro could be had with so many different options that it was hard for a true muscle car lover / hot rodder not to like.Since the Camaro first came out in 1967, it has generated a lot of fans, and if you owned some other kind of car, it could make a Camaro hater out of you really quick, the top of the heap in muscle cars, as far as I'm concerned is the ZL1 Camaro, if you wish to argue this point, well that's up to you, but you go right a head and show me another muscle cars, besides the ZL1 Corvette that could run a 10.06 ¼ mile, with the addition of slicks and uncorked headers, and of course the right driver.Rather you love it, or hate it, you have got to respect it, the Camaro has done a lot for the whole muscle car seen, and it will continue to do so when Chevy releases the new one.Now back to the article, I do believe that I have finished my little rant, the options list was long on the Camaro, well not in 1967, but by 1968 the Camaro was a muscle car lovers wet dream, you could get, a small block or a big block, and you could get the from a straight back 6, all the way up to and all aluminum 650 HP 427 CID monster, that was capable of 10's in ¼ mile.

You had a choice of two different automatic transmissions, for the V8 models, the turbo 350 hydromatic, and the turbo hyromatic 400, of course you can guess what one was the big heavy duty model, you also had a choice of three different four speed transmissions, and a three speed standard, right at this time, I can't seem to remember the model number for the 3 speed model, but the 4 speed manual transmissions were as follows, the Muncie M-20 standard duty 4 speed, and the Muncie M-21 heavy duty model, and the king of kings, the Muncie M-22 Rock Crusher, which supposedly got it's name when diamonds were dropped in to the gear box of the transmission, and it crushed them to dust, and didn't frag the gears.The Camaro also had a four wheel disc brake option, and most models at least had front disc brakes, and there were a wide array of gear choices for the rear end of the Camaro, 3.08:1, 3.

73:1, 3.31:1 were the most common rear end gear sets, but the choices didn't stop there, you also had 2.73:1, 3.36:1.

4.10:1, 4.11:1, and 3.55:1, so you can see right there is one reason why the Camaro took a hold like it did.The engine options were also a long list for the high performance lover that exist in all men, it would start with a plain old no frills straight back 6, and steadily progress through most of Chevrolet's engine sizes, let's see if I can remember all of these, first of course was the 250 CID straight back 6, and from there the V8 models would reign supreme, a 302 CID model was available in the Z/28 Only, the 307 was available for the plain Jane models, and the other high performance models were as follows: First would be the 327, which still lives in infamy as one of Chevrolet's best engines ever built, and then the 350, this engine would be used mainly in the SS models, along with a 396, and a 427 CID model, Chevrolet never put a 454 in a Camaro.

With those engine options came a cross ram manifold for the off road version of the Z/28, this is extremely rare to see, it's looks awesome, and provided a huge top end gain in power for the Camaro, these engines were laughingly rated at 290 Hp for the factory, but were closer to 450 HP, if you calculate according to the ¼ mile time and weight of the car, it was right around this area, believe me, I've done a lot of studying on the first generation Camaro.By 1968 and 1969, the muscle cars needed to have more then just power to sell, so the paint options begun to emerge, the color options were awesome, for the time era, you could score a Camaro in orange, blue, green, black, silver and white, and for this time era that was huge, and now for the SS, RS and Z/28 models, you could get style stripes, (AKA) racing stripes, this improved the look and style of the Camaro by 10 fold, the Z/28, RS and SS models had an option for a center consol, which would bolt to the floor of the car and you shifter handle would come through it, also giving you a full array of consol mounted gauges, and an extra place to store small items.

By: David Atkin