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Pro touring cars are HOT right now. Check out Barrett-Jackson’s latest sales from Las Vegas--nearly every top seller was a custom! While there’s a time and a place for factory stock muscle it’s not usually on the open road. We’re talking about taking a car out, shredding the tires and hitting an out of state show with the A/C blasting before coming home and putting the car away wet. You can do that with the right car with the right mods, and this car has them all: Brand new 502/502 under the hood, a DSE front suspension, Baer brakes, leather seats and air conditioning. Oh, and it’s as black as black gets. Climb in and strap down--it’s time to get sinister.
Walk up to the car and sight down the very straight sides. Black is absolutely the hardest to get straight but this car wears it as well as we’ve seen. Beauty goes further than skin deep, too--the floors and structural metal is all original. The gorgeous paint is accented by new and mint trim, brand new glass and the seriously cool salt flat style Budnik wheels. Nitto NT555 tires are at all four corners, 235/40/ZR18 front and 275/35/ZR20 rear. Of course, all of the chrome pieces from the door handles to the mirrors are new. Z/28 spoilers and a functional steel cowl hood round out the visual enhancements. This car won’t kill you with flash--it leaves the talking to the mechanicals.
Likewise the interior looks stock on first glance, but you’ll love running down the road in here. The seats look factory, but they’re done with leather surfaces for comfort and luxury--how cool is that? Grab onto the sport steering wheel and adjust for rake--it’s bolted to an Ididit column, painted black to look stock. Extra insulation hides behind the new carpet, new headliner and fresh door panels for driving comfort. You’re not going to miss the Flowmasters underneath but you’ll be happy to kill the road noise you get in old cars. The center console is in perfect shape with new top plates, a new lens and clean shifter. Switch on the A/C and treat yourself to cold air--everything works in this car better than new. Rockford Fosgate is responsible for the tunes with an in-dash CD player. The coolest feature has to be the gauges--a G Stock Speedtach and four-gauge pack which fit in the stock nacelles. No need for console gauges here--it’s a clean look with full instrumentation. One look and you’ll agree this is what GM should have done in the first place!
Under the hood you’ll get a glimpse of what makes this car so special. Dead center is the massive ZZ502/502HP GM crate engine, fed by a Holley 850CFM carb and expelling through ceramic coated Hooker Super Competition headers. An HEI distributor lights the mixture, underdrive water pump and alternator pulleys keep power losses down and a full Be Cool module with a fat radiator, twin SPAL fans and a full shroud regulates the temperature. A new battery is in the corner covered by a Delco resto battery topper, new wiring is everywhere from the dash cluster forward and it’s all dialed in: We believe every one of our cars should run, and run hard.
You’ll see this car’s best features from underneath. We went a little crazy with the Detroit Speed and Engineering catalog, though you’re unlikely to mind one bit. We started with one of their brand new, hydroformed front subframes--that’s OE level stuff, folks. Tubular upper and lower control arms, 525# front springs ride on aluminum coil overs and rack and pinion steering is miles ahead of the factory worm gear setup. Half height aluminum body mounts with all stainless hardware bring the ride height down without sacrificing the suspension’s geometry. Subframe connectors are heliarced in place for added rigidity. Stopping power is overkill, to say the least--Baer Pro 6 piston calipers squeezing 14” two-piece rotors up front and 13” rotors with single piston calipers out back affect the earth’s rotation when applied fully. Power from the 502 flows back into a built Turbo 400 transmission and a 12 bolt rear with 3.73 gears hung from HD leaf springs--we wanted a bulletproof setup and nothing beats those parts for reliability.
Flawless inside and out, fully sorted and ready to rock this Camaro is in show winning condition with serious mechanicals built for whatever you throw at it. Trailer it around or thrash the hell out of it--it’ll do both with ease!
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