Readers' Day-Two Rides

Skip Gaebe 1968 Camaro

IN 1968 I BOUGHT a new SS Camaro for $4,000. Big money in those days. It had a 396, M22, and 4.11 Posi. I needed my tunes and I wanted to be warm, so it had an AM radio and heater. The car was painted Fathom Blue, had steel rims and baby hubcaps. I wanted the 375hp engine, but the salesman told me they didn’t make that option any longer. Later I found out that was a lie. Any rate, I got the 325hp engine.

My friends and I were OK tuners back in those days, and we could get the car to perform pretty well. Of course, like everyone else the game was street racing. (I never did take it to the drags.) I would take it to 6,000 rpm and slam the gears. The engine took the pounding for a while, but one day, while jamming gears, a piston wristpin came out and took out the block wall. That was that.

I lived in Renton, Washington, in those days and worked for an aircraft manufacturing company. Money was not falling out of my pockets, so the car stayed parked in a garage for about a month. All my buddies made life hard for me. No fun being in the copilot seat or, worse, riding in coach.

I had two friends who worked for a Chev dealership in Burien, Washington. One was the shop foreman, the other the parts manager. One afternoon the guys were over having a few beers. “Well, Skip, what are you going to do for an engine?” one asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” I said.

“How about a 427?” the parts guy said.

“How about an L88 427?”

In those days I didn’t know what an L88 was, but the 427 sounded fine with me. “So what will this cost me?” I asked.

Now the story gets a bit fun. He replied, “I want $300 and that Siamese kitten your next-door neighbor has.” He had seen the cat a few days before when we were in the backyard. The following night, I pulled the old slip-and-slide and got the cat.