1967 Trans-Am season review

[Jon Mello]

January 21, 1967 Washington Daily News indicates Johnny Moore's Z-28 arrived on Wednesday the 18th and
work has quickly begun on turning it into a race car in preparation for going to Daytona.



(Jon Mello Collection)


Ev Gardner's column in WDN on January 26th features a nice photo of Johnny Moore as he's prepping the car.


(Jon Mello Collection)


Don Yenko placed an ad in Competition Press & Autoweek in late January showing his intent to build Z-28s
that were available already prepped for racing, basically an off-the-shelf race car, which he called the Stormer.


(Jon Mello Collection)


Phil Seaborn got one of the first '67 Z-28s in the Pacific Northwest and the Seattle Post Intelligencer did
a short feature on it prior to Phil making preparation to turn it into a racer for the Trans-Am series.


(Jon Mello Collection)


Carroll Shelby was late putting a Mustang team together. Ford Motor Company was really wanting Mercury to be the Ford
factory team in Trans-Am but Shelby had wanted to have the chance to defend his Trans-Am title won in '66, plus there
were people within Ford that did want to see Mustang involved as well. Shelby was able to get a support program for racers
running Group 2 Mustangs in Trans-Am and A/Sedan and this helped bring a lot of Mustangs to the racing grids in 1967.

[Jon Mello]

The first race on the Trans-Am schedule took place on February 3rd, 1967 at Daytona as a lead up to the
Daytona 24-Hour Continental. Quite a few of the drivers ran in both races. Only four Camaros were prepared
in time to make it to Daytona due to the fact that the cars were not delivered to the owners until just a couple
of weeks before the race.


Jon Mello Collection



Daytona 300 Trans-Am, February 3, 1967. Mark Donohue's first race in a Camaro.

Photo by Craig Fisher

[MO]

Cool stuff Jon... You have a great collection!!

[Jon Mello]

Thanks, Fred.  Glad you're enjoying this stuff.

Here's a report on the Daytona 300 Trans-Am as found in Motor Trend. The race was won by Bob Tullius in a year-old
Dodge Dart after the other "heavy hitters" ran into various forms of trouble.

Jon Mello Collection

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 300 Trans-Am coverage as found in Car & Driver magazine. (Jon Mello Collection)

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 300 Trans-Am coverage as found in Sports Car Graphic. (Jon Mello Collection)

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 300 Trans-Am coverage plus Dana Chevrolet and Nickey/Bill Thomas ads from Riverside Raceway magazine. (Jon Mello Collection)





  

         

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 300 Trans-Am race coverage from Competition Press & Autoweek. (Jon Mello Collection)

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 300 and 24-Hour Continental program. (Jon Mello Collection)








Here's an actual tech inspection decal that was placed on the windshield of a car
from either the Trans-Am or 24-Hour Continental. Both races used the same decal.


Jon Mello Collection

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 300 Trans-Am pics and results from the Daytona Firecracker 400/Paul Revere 250 program. (Jon Mello Collection)

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 24-Hour Continental coverage from Competition Press & Autoweek. Three of the
Camaros from the Trans-Am race also ran in the Continental that same weekend. (Jon Mello Collection)

[Jon Mello]

Daytona 24-Hour Continental coverage from Racing Pictorial magazine. (Jon Mello Collection)

[Jon Mello]

Canadian newspaper articles after the Daytona race weekend. (Craig Fisher Collection)

[Jon Mello]

The February 18, 1967 issue of Competition Press & Autoweek reported that Bill Thomas would be involved in heading up
the Nickey Chevrolet Trans-Am effort but this was a short lived endeavor. 1967 was an off year for car sales in general and
Nickey decided to conserve their resources shortly after this. I talked to George Follmer about this recently and he told me
that he was good friends with Bill Thomas and does not recall ever being asked to drive a Camaro for him.


(Jon Mello Collection)

[Jon Mello]

Various tidbits from Competition Press & Autoweek after the Daytona 300 race. The first item is a column with
thoughts from Roger Penske. I like his idea that the Trans-Am should have been run as part of the same weekend
as one of the USRRC or Can-Am events. (Jon Mello Collection)



Yenko ad showing their 427 and Z-28 Camaro
offerings along with the already successful Stinger.



Preliminary entry list for the Sebring Trans-Am shows Nickey Chevrolet was intending to show
up with two '67 Zs as of March 9th (the race was 3/31) but this did not ultimately happen.