Speed Freak

How Ty Buckner got hooked on smoking … the competition

- Chris Shelton

When is “enough” enough? For most people it’s a brand new muscle car. It sure was for Ty Buckner when he bought his 2011 Camaro SS. “It was my first new vehicle purchase,” he reminisces.

But Ty isn’t like most people. He’s like us ... restless.

The story of his fifth-gen is like one of those afterschool TV specials that starts out innocently enough. In this case he dabbled with bolt-ons. “When it was like long-tubes, intake, and tune it did 12.2,” Ty remembers.

But then in the winter of 2012 he got into the hard stuff. Specifically, he started doing nitrous. A 150-shot knocked the car into the mid-11s.

The hook officially set, Ty descended a slippery slope of modifications, each more extreme than the last. A set of ported heads, a cam, and a manifold got it closer to the 10s. But then the nitrous habit got out of control. Laypeople can hardly handle one stage; Ty needed two to feed his growing habit. A 150- and a 125-shot broke the 10-second barrier.