SUPERCHARGED TIME MACHINE

Les Sutak's supercharged 1969 Camaro Z/28 appeared on the cover of HOT ROD 43 years ago. It remains a street machine time capsule today.

- BARRY KLUCZYK

More than three years ago, while straining to absorb the Detroit area's mammoth Woodward Dream Cruise, we spied something familiar: a blown 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28 with a serious '70s rake and multicolor graphics that were as period-correct as a satin baseball jacket with a fondue stain on the sleeve. There was a time, of course, when a 6-71 GMC blower poking through the hood of a first-gen Camaro was as common as today's LS swaps, but this one stood out for more than its classic street-machine stance. It's because we'd seen it before.

We saw it in November 1979, to be exact. That was the issue of HOT ROD on which it graced the cover. It looked identical, four decades later, to the vision Tim Marshall and the godfather Gray Baskerville shot at the Car Craft Street Machine Nationals that year. When we say it looked identical, we mean identical, right down to the same Dyers Street Charger supercharger, widened rear Cragars, psychedelic stripes, and homemade slapper bars. The Camaro's owner was identical, too: Les Sutak, from Kingsville, Ontario. That was around 2019, and we made plans to follow up with him and his time-capsule street machine.

A few months later, the pandemic hit, and the border to Canada closed. Les lives a few miles south of Windsor, Ontario, so crossing over with our cameras was essentially impossible. That changed in mid-2022 and when the border opened, so we hustled across the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit to catch up with Les and his supercharged time machine. The car is a true X11-code Z/28 that he bought in 1973 after lusting after it for months. In fact, Les was already driving another 327-powered '69 Camaro, but this one stood out in his town.