One more old story to add to the discussion - in the fall of '71, I was in college with limited resources (driving a '57 Bel Air that I had spent my high school years rebuilding), when a friend of mine asked me to take a look at a Camaro he was considering buying. He worked at a local store as a security guy - one of the store's employees (young lady) was selling her recently ex-husband's Camaro, complaining about poor gas mileage, manual transmission, and manual steering being too much for her as a daily driver. No joke, we pulled in to the parking lot at his store that evening, next to a dark green/white stripe 1969 Camaro, with Z badges and a set of traction bars leering from under the car. ZL2 hood, spoilers; upon popping the hood, the car was equipped with a crossram, and I remember the hood had a prop rod to hold it up (I don't recall if it was pinned). It was related to me then that the car was also equipped with 4 wheel discs, which I didn't inspect (I was much more impressed with the crossram setup). Car had headers, was very clean being only a couple of years old then, and supposedly was available for the first $2400.00 offered. I certainly didn't have that kind of money, neither did my friend (who was paying his own way through school), so both of us passed on the car. It sold immediately: I never saw or heard of it again. Pity I didn't think of writing down the VIN, but this was two years before I bought my X77 ($1600.00), and nine years before I realized what originality meant to original, high option cars (courtesy of Doug Marion and Super Chevy). A very similar combination of the options/color and counter parts appeared in Super Chevy in the 80's, also at Super Chevy Bristol and at other shows, but I had no way of verifying if it was the $2400 well-equipped Z from '71. Guess I'll never know for sure - memories are no substitute for ownership or documentation.
Regards,
Steve
