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The First Chevy Camaro was built on August 11th, 1966. That 1967 Camaro made Chevy a contender in the pony car segment and launched an enduring legend.
Happy Birthday, Camaro!
On August 11th, 1966 the first Chevrolet Camaro rolled off the assembly line. The Camaro debuted the following month as Chevy’s entry into the new pony car segment first inaugurated by the Ford Mustang. Though belated, the Chevy’s answer to the Mustang has proven a potent one over the years as the Camaro has cemented its place among muscle car royalty. To honor the Camaro’s anniversary, we wanted to look back at its development and initial year of production, to discover what has made it such an enduring nameplate.
Camaro Development
The Camaro’s story begins with the Ford Mustang. Sure, Detroit’s automakers had built performance-oriented cars in the past, but the Mustang’s unique combination of being lithe yet powerful, affordable yet stylish minted a new segment in the auto industry, the pony car, and it was a thunderbolt of a sales coup for Ford. In just two and a half years, the Mustang sold over a million units and put the rest of Detroit on notice, they too needed a pony car to compete with Ford’s.
Chevy had the Corvair on-hand and hastily turbocharged it, but the quirky mid-engine was not up to the challenge. Neither was Chevy’s alternative, the boxy Nova II which represented the direct inverse of the Mustang’s much-touted curb appeal. And so, work began in 1965 on a new project, code named Panther, to build Chevy its analogue to the Mustang.
The new car would be riding on the new rear-wheel drive F-body platform, one it would share with its Pontiac cousin, the Firebird. Though a departure from the existing Nova II, the new Camaro would end up sharing much with the planned next-generation Nova II, which would eventually debut in 1968.
What is a “Camaro” Anyway?
Shakespeare wrote a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but the bard did not know squat about automotive marketing. Getting the name right when marketing a vehicle, like naming it after an animal or celestial body, is, to borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, the difference between the lighting bug and the lightning. Which is all to say that among Chevy’s challenges in competing with the Mustang was to create something compelling, starting with a catchy name.
In June of 1966, as part of the Camaro’s press launch Chevy sent out a telegram to leading automotive journalists inviting them on June 28th for an important SEPAW meeting. A follow-up, though no less cryptic telegram the next day explained that SEPAW stood for “Society for the Eradication of Panthers from the Automotive World.”
The Camaro was cooked up/discovered by Bob Lund, Chevrolet’s merchandising manager, and GM vice president Ed Rollett who supposedly found the word “camaro” in a French-to-English dictionary translating it to friend or compatriot.
When the Camaro debuted on September 26th of 1966, Chevrolet general manager Pete Estes was asked by journalists just what was a Camaro, anyway? Estes said a camaro was “a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs.” Which was funny, but perhaps not in the way Estes intended.
’67 Camaro Specs & Trims
The first Camaro’s went on sale days later, September 29th, 1966, as 1967 model year cars. The new Camaro adopted a Coke bottle body design popular at the time as its interpretation on the long hood, short deck standard of pony and muscle cars. It looked the business and carried the business under the hood as well.
Like the Mustang, the Camaro’s base iteration came with a weak, mass-market straight-six measuring 230 cu.-in. and making just 140 horsepower. Of course, there were alternatives on offer. The Camaro SS (Super Sport) came with three V8 options starting with a 350 cu.-in. V8 making 295 horsepower and 380 lb.-ft. of torque. Two other 396 cu.-in. V8s, the L35 and L78 big blocks, were also available making 325 and 375 horsepower, respectively.
The Z/28 Puts Racing Rivals on Notice
For those looking to race their Camaro out of the box, there was the secretive Z/28 trim. The Z/28 was not included in sales literature at the time and just 602 were built for the 1967 model year. It ran a 302 small block V8 (four-barrel Holley carb and 290 horse) designed for Trans Am racing. In addition to the 302, the Z/28 came equipped with a revised racing suspension, optional Positraction, front disc brakes, and 15-inch rally wheels.
Even with a small-ish V8, the Z/28 instantly proved a formidable force on the track as it saw remarkable success on the SCCA Trans Am racing circuit. Penski team driver Mark Donahue took three wins in 1967 and used the same Z/28 Camaro to 10 victories in 13 races the following year.
’67 Camaro by the Numbers
The 1967 Chevrolet Camaro was priced at a base MSRP of $2,446, with the convertible version as a $240 upgrade. Of those first-year cars, 121,051 were base models, 64,842 were RS (basically a cosmetic trim), 34,411 were SS trim, and the final 602 cars were Z/28s. With a total of 220,906 cars sold, the Chevy Camaro had done well for its debut year, though the Mustang still outsold it two-to-one.
The 1967 Camaro marked the beginning of a successful decades-long run for Chevy’s original pony car. It is final model year, at least in internal combustion form, is set for 2024.
