1967 Camaro L78 Pace Car from Glockner Chevrolet

[KGR]

I posted in the pace car forums but wanted to share here as well. My dad has had his pace car since 1996.

⁃ 396ci/375hp L78 4K
⁃ M-21 four-speed
⁃ O-1 Paint Code Festival Car
⁃ Delivered to Glockner Chevrolet
⁃ All original sheet metal and numbers-matching born-with drivetrain
⁃ Restored with original or NOS parts
⁃ Bought in 1996 with 28,000 original miles

Story of how we got it as follows…

My dad has been working on muscle cars his entire life to this day. He had a couple of different Mustang’s in Michigan where he grew up, before he joined the Army and took his rally green 1969 Z/28 with him to Fort Dix, New Jersey during Vietnam. Later on when he moved to Florida, he did a lot of work on my Uncle’s 1969 and 1970 Boss 429 mustangs before restoring a car for himself, a candy apple red small block four speed 1971 Corvette. I was told that he had to sell it when I was born because it wouldn’t fit a baby seat… Once I was out of the baby seat, and throughout my childhood he would check the auto trader every weekend in search of something else to buy and work on/take to car shows. In November of 1996, he found this listing in the Custom, Antique & Sportscar Trader Florida Edition: “1967 CAMARO Pace car convertible, 39G, 4 spd, 1 of 21 built, all numbers match, many extra parts”

He called on the car spoke to the owner, finding out that he was the second caller and a a guy from Ohio who called first was sending his dad down from Ft. Myers to look at the Camaro. My Grandfather lived in Naples and was close to where the Camaro was, so my dad told him the situation that he was second in line and asked him to try and be there at the same time the first guy went to look. My dad also told his dad that if the car had a blue stripe on the nose, to buy it.

My grandfather usually traveled with a video camera, and his trip to look at the Camaro was no different. We recently digitized the VHS tape from his tape recording showing him and the other gentleman alongside the seller, entering a pole barn stuffed to the ceiling with car parts and boat parts and various other things. The tape rolls as they navigated through the maze of boxes to look at the Camaro, looking under the hood with flashlights verifying the numbers matching engine, inspecting the dusty interior, looking in the trunk, and checking out the shredded convertible top. There were also two other Camaro’s in the barn buried under blankets, boxes, and bins that could hardly be seen, save for their noses sticking out. From the general appearance, the Camaro was filthy dirty and didn’t show very well, and my grandpa walked off while convincing the other guy not to buy “that piece of shit.” Once out of sight, he then circled the block and returned back to put down a deposit. He had remembered my dad’s words - there was a blue stripe on the nose.

A week later my Grandpa, Uncle, Dad, and six-year-old me drove to Naples to pick up the Camaro. When we arrived, the owner had a change of heart and didn’t want to sell the car anymore and asked us the leave. This is where it’s important to mention that my grandfather was a barber his entire life - he owned several barber shops in Michigan before settling in Naples where he owned the local shop there. My grandfather would have a dozen or more customers daily, hundreds each month. I’ve come to know that good barbers are basically therapists with scissors, having the ability to hold conversation with strangers all day long - and my grandfather knew how to talk to people so when we were thrown off the property, he stepped in and talked us right back into buying the Camaro. The only vivid memory I have from the day we picked up the car is that after my dad paid for the Camaro, the seller put the money in the back pocket of his jeans and at some point, it all fell out onto the ground. For a few minutes I was the richest six-year-old in town, until my grandpa, who had seen what happened, asked me to return the money. I reluctantly complied.

We didn’t have much time to inspect the car when we bought it, fearing that the deal could fall through at any minute, so my dad finally got a good look at it after getting the car home. My dad discovered that his new Camaro had a 396/375hp motor and not the 325hp motor that he had originally thought. The car was very complete and was in much better shape than he believed when it was purchased. The body was beautiful once it was cleaned up, exactly what you would expect from a car with only 28,000 original miles. The biggest issue was that the convertible top was in tatters, but if it hadn’t been, who knows if the first potential buyer would’ve passed on it?

As the restoration began, my dad started to meet other Camaro fanatics in the hobby, and as a six-year-old who went everywhere with his dad, I got to meet them as well. My dad became very close friends with Jeff Ashen, Tony Habib, and Matt Murphy, and they were all extremely helpful to him when he was restoring the Camaro to make sure that it was as correct as possible - all the way down to the paint, which is actually the Bright White truck paint only used for the O-1 paint code vehicles. With the Camaro being an L78 festival pace car, my dad had decided on a full and complete nut and bolt restoration that he took as far as he was capable on his own before sending the car out to Colorado and enlisting Larry Christensen to help put the finishing touches on it. The car came back a few months later from Colorado and it was perfect, and it’s still perfect today even with a 20+ year-old paint job on it. The Camaro sits very well protected in my dad’s garage among some of the other cars my dad and I have added to the collection over the years - but the pace car is still the crown jewel and the favorite.

A couple years ago I ordered the Muscle Car Docs from NCRS, and we determined that the Camaro was delivered to Glockner Chevrolet on April 27, 1967. I have recently begun researching to try and locate old photos of the car and determine who the prior owner was. We bought the car from the second owner, and he told us that he purchased it in southern Ohio sometime in 1983 or earlier, from a man whose last name may have been Braun. That is where the trail goes cold at the moment but me and my dad are still on the hunt for more history on his pace car.

As a side note… back in the 1990’s the seller lived outside of Naples at an old nursery, and I’ve learned recently from speaking with him and his wife that at one point they had sixteen Camaro’s (one for each family member and then some) and tons of original parts to go along with the cars - everything was stored in trailers, garages, pole barns, sheds, under tarps, and even a few cars in the woods. Before selling the pace car to my dad, he sold a yellow 1969 427 Yenko which he told me he now regrets. A few years later after we bought the pace car, he left the Naples area and moved to central Florida and at that time he got rid of the remainder of his cars and parts, save two Camaro’s - and they were the other two cars my grandfather barely could see and catch on tape during the day of his first visit there. Those two Camaro’s ended up being a fathom green 1969 Z/28 Camaro that me and my dad bought in 2014 and just finished restoring together (I made a post here about it back then) and a butternut yellow 1967 RS Camaro that we just purchased last month.