A few weeks ago I responded to a CL ad for a set of original '57 Chevy wheels located 100 miles SE of Columbus in a small town along the Ohio River. The wheels were nice and I ended up buying them, but the best part of the trip was discovering that the neighbor of the guy selling the wheels had a '69 Camaro sitting under a metal carport behind his mobile home. I knocked on the guy's door and asked if I could look at it. It turned out to be a really odd and rare 6 cylinder with a 3-on-the-tree shifter. I worked out a price with the guy and made arrangements to come back and get it in a few days (I first had to find a place to stash it so that the head-of-the-war-dept wouldn't find out about it...at least for the next few months...we all know that game).
The seller, Don is 64 and the original owner. His dad, Don Sr. decided in the spring of '70 that it would be nice to get a new Nova for his son who was about to graduate from high school. They found a dealer with a few Novas for sale, and a left-over red '69 Camaro (as soon as Don Jr. saw the Camaro, the Nova idea was quickly forgotten). The Camaro had the misfortune of being built with a 6 cylinder engine with a 3-on-the-tree shifter. They bought it for the dealer's invoice cost on Mar 25th, 1970 (Good Friday)...6 months after it was built (apparently, the 3-on-the-tree shifter was not well received by potential buyers). Don drove it until 1974, then sold it to his cousin Charlie in the same town. Charlie drove it for several years, then replaced the manual tranny with an automatic so his wife could drive it (I guess a stick-shift was just too daunting for her to master). It was parked behind Charlie's garage with a blown tranny in 1986 and sat there rotting until Don got tired of seeing it deteriorate and bought it back in 2001. Don lives on small Soc Sec checks and doesn't have the means to restore it, hence its sale.
Some weird things about this car...it was first titled as a '70, and the title still says "1970". Don says the dealer sent the application for title to the Ohio DMV and someone there screwed up, probably thinking it was a '70 since it was so far into that model year. Another odd thing about it is that it came with an air cleaner with a Therm-Vac valve and heat stove for carburetor (I assumed all 1st Gen Camaros with sixes came without heat stoves). Don says the air cleaner is original to the car. The date code on the cowl tag says "09C" for the month built, so maybe the engines from Flint were then being built with 1970 air cleaners. The last odd thing about it is that its cowl tag says "X11", but it doesn't appear to have had wheelwell trim, or quarter panel chrome trim pieces. I would ask Don, but he's not happy that he sold the car right now...I'll ask him at some point in the future.
The car had very few options...250 engine upgrade, floor mats, whitewall tires, Style Trim Group (maybe...still not certain about that), and mag hubcaps. Don said that the Camaro had "really ugly" full hubcaps that he didn't like while it sat at the dealership...the salesman said they had a set of mag hubcaps that they would throw into the deal to make Don Jr. happy. It was a radio delete car, but the delete plate is broken and the right fender has been replaced with one from a '69 with an antenna. Along with the original air cleaner Don gave me the original column shift steering column, z-bar, and a few other original bits and pieces. It is also an original code 52 Garnet Red car with a code 711 black standard interior. The original engine is coded "F0905BE", and it still has 3 of its original "FC" coded wheels (originally painted black).
The best part of all is that the car served for quite awhile as the home for a very long rat snake. I pulled a snakeskin from one of the headliner bows and it measured over 6' long. I found 3 more long skins in the car. After quite a bit of cleaning the car still smells like snake sh*t...it may be awhile before the stench goes away.
I think I'll convert this extremely rare 6 cylinder 3-on-the-tree car to yet another Z28 tribute car...whatdya think?
