Edelbrock's red camaro

[vtfb68]

Hi guys,
I was wondering if anybody has ever checked out the red 67 SS "that came from the factory with a 327" becuse they ran out of 350s ? I remember this being a magazine car early on (I think one of the stories was "THE CAMARO THAT COULD"). I don't buy that the factory made so many big mistakes. It seems that a lot of people think their wrong part is somehow original. It was common in the late 70's early 80's to crash or buy a crashed muscle car an put all the good stuff on a stocker... we did a few... numbers ment nothing! Parts were cheap, labor was free. We also swapped out all the good parts we wanted when we sold or traded cars. I have gone through 7 early camaros through the years and still have many of the good parts, kept 1 original BB car. Our group went through dozens (Chevelles and Novas too) and i'm sure this was repeted throughout the hot rod world. People junked 302s becuse they did not know how to tune or drive them. Anyway any info on the Edelbrock camaro would be great to know.
  Thanks,
    Victor

[CNorton]

There were/are lots of stories about the red Camaro.  Check this URL for a Hot Rod Magazine paragraph about the history of that car:

http://www.hotrod.com/featuredvehicles/44479_1967_chevrolet_camaro_z28/index.html

They state that it was the first Camaro to be brought to California.  Who remembers exactly what was going on then?  Anyway, it makes a good story.

[maroman]

I think it's advertised as being the first SS built in Calif. One thing for sure, Chevrolet sold a boatload of Camaros because of this car. But it took 40 years for Hotrod to admit they FAKED all the time slips in the quarter mile. The "396" was actually a built 427.

[william]

PHR did a feature on the Hot Rod/Edelbrock '67 in the May '95 issue. Reading the article and examining the photos [VIN tag, body tag] would cause anyone with a bit of Camaro knowledge to doubt much of what has been claimed about it.

It was built 08C at the Norwood, Ohio plant; there were a few '67s [40?] built earlier [08A] at the Van Nuys, CA plant-so much for "the first Camaro in CA" claim. Furthermore the VIN sequence was 2245. That means there were 2,244 Camaros built prior to it. Do you really believe any one person at Chevy knew where all of them were shipped? Or that this was "the first SS?"

The car has a place in 1st gen history; no questions there. I believe that history should be accurate.
 

[KurtS]

I highly doubt it was the first SS. The first cars with VIN's normally spanned all models so the plant had some build experience and Chevrolet had some production evaluation vehicles. Then they built base vehicles while getting the line up to speed.
First publicly saleable unit - that may be possible.