Camaro Generation 1 The 60's. The Legend began with the Prototype making the Show Circuits by 1965 modifying a previously shelved design XP-836 to build prototypes Z-26, Z-27, and finally Z-28 (the prototype number designator would actually later be built as a model or options release of actual production car), but the Camaro would not begin production untill 1967. By 1969, the end of Gen 1, the sleeper ZL1, the Camaro would be delivering some 600hp in such a small package.
Talk about out of control, this Camaro, even with smaller engines, would literally go airborne, a fact that this author can well attest to, at 140 mph a Gen 1 Camaro is at her apex, every little bump or divet in the road she is in the air, at 160 mph, no matter how much more power you have, the tires will no longer stay on the road long enough to deliver it to you. This author found this out in a five mile chase with the Chief of Police in the summer of 78 that would end with the destruction of a new cruiser not 24 hrs old. But old Rudy was fine, I did return to check, a matter of honer, fun is fun, but you don't leave someone to die. Certainly I would like to say that was the better skill won, and certainly I had a lot of experience at speeds over a hundred, and a lot of experience in that Camaro, where Rudy had no experience and was very unfamiliar with his new Cruiser. Fact is, only Lady Luck left either of us alive. That same Camaro would meat her demise the next year when she took out five posts of a guard rail at 140 mph. Indeed I have driven faster, but in safer cars. And, I do still Love the Gen Camaros, just have a much greater respect for the speeds they car reach that exceed their design.
