Jamie's Camaro
My dad helped me get my orange car when i was 19. It was painted red with really
cheesy yellow and orange "ZZ top" stripes. I drove it that way for a year or so, then
started sanding it down to do a quick re-paint. 5-yrs, 25 grand, and countless
headaches later it was almost done. All that was left to do was to install the interior,
and touch up some of the undercarriage paint.My wife's relatives (and their friends)
came up from out of town for my father-in-law's 50th b-day party, and the one friend
was kinda into Camaros. My wife's aunt told me to take him for a ride and "scare him"
cuz he was somewhat of a smart-aleck. So we go out to dinner, have a few drinks and
head out to the party. The road to the town hall is a hilly, winding road that had recently
been repaved. I knew the first part of the road well, but the hall was out farther than my
memory of the road could recollect.

As we are driving along, we come to a long, straight downhill section that comes back
up and makes what appears to be a gradual right-hander. I nail the throttle in low 2
and hold it to the 6500 shift to drive. I'm trail-braking into the corner when I realize it's
an off-camber, decreasing radius corner, and the suspension is unloaded from
coming up the hill at apprx 90-100 mph. I panic because the front tires are sliding
across the blacktop not doing much, so I cram my foot down on the pedal controlling
the BAER 13" cross-drilled & slotted rotors to try to scrub any speed possible. The next
thing I know we're in some kind of sickening tit-a-whirl ride with a soundtrack of
smashing and crunching. The car came to rest in the ditch 175 feet from the power
pole that I clipped just behind the drivers door ( which is what tore the wheel in half,
snapped the axle, pulled the spring and shock out of the floor, which then punched a
hole in the gas tank.) The insurance company was a pain in the butt, but they totalled it
and gave me only what i had receipts for, $24,200. They also paid for the pole and
transformer (the only one on the whole damn road!) which was about $2,000.

I found my Z11 from a tip from a guy I worked with. He told me about a friend that had a
"pace car" for sale. Yeah right! The guy was known as a BS'er, so i didn't give it much
thought. A few weeks later I got curious, so my dad and i went to have a look-see. The
guy led us to a garage behind this old run down resort 25 minutes from my house. As
he opened the garage door slowly (due to the avalanche of junk/garbage!), I spotted
the RS tail lights, white with orange stripes, white top and orange interior. The car
looked legit, so I jotted down the codes and casting numbers and said i would be back
in touch. I got home and checked it out, sure 'nuf. It appeared to be a small-block pace
car. I ended up dickering with the guy on price for almost a year (his buddy was
checking to see what it was worth cuz he was clueless), then brought it home.










As I cleaned it up and snooped around some more, I found all the visual clues
denoting it as a big-block car! WHOOPIE!!! I took the half torn down 327 out of it and put
my 355 in it temporarily. All iIhad to do was add a battery, radiator, exhaust, check the
fluids and bleed the brakes and she drives like a dream!

Every black cloud has a silver lining.....even when they are self-induced out of stupidity!