AN UNDERRATED 1970s POWERHOUSE
‘THERE IS UNDENIABLE CHIC TO HEADING OUT ON THE CIRCUIT IN THE SORT OF CAR ONCE DRIVEN BY JAMES HUNT’
Ford’s Galaxie and then the iconic Mustang started the V8 era, but the Camaro had an impact over a longer period. The first-generation Camaro scored its first win at Croft in 1969 and the final success came courtesy of Stuart Graham at the end of ’75, the Camaro’s 53rd outright victory in the series. After that, the big bangers were banned.
Despite the championship’s class system working against it, the Camaro also took an outright title in 1973 with Frank Gardner, the Aussie winning six of the nine rounds. The thunderous big-bore machines brought major spectacle to the front of the grid and their considerable grunt made them tough to beat.
“I loved the Camaros and they did well for us,” recalls
Graham, still a touring car regular at Goodwood meetings. “We ran it in-house and my brother did all the engines. Once you got it sorted it was great – we quickly worked out we needed stiff springs and Bilstein did good work on the dampers.
“It was a good-handling car. People thought it was just about having more power than everything else, but it’s no good if you can’t get it around the corners. We could corner just as quickly as the small cars.
“It was always a bit short in the braking department. The Achilles’ heel was the brakes because under the rules you couldn’t do many changes. When manufacturers developed a high-performance version of cars, they updated things as they broke. They forgot to upgrade things like brakes! The important thing was the 0-60mph time. I developed a smooth style that looked after the brakes. If you overdrive them for too long, big cars don’t like it.
“The Camaro was underestimated in period. By 1975 there was nothing that could touch it, really.”
Frontrunning historic racer John Young has brought a 450bhp example, featuring a 5.7-litre V8 engine, with four-speed gearbox. Built by Richard Lloyd as a recreation of the car in which James Hunt and then Autosport editor Robert Fearnall won the 1973 Tour of Britain, the Camaro has been successful in Tour Britannia and has also appeared at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Successful tin-top and sportscar racer Young had only just bought the car prior to our test and plans to convert it to Group 1 specification to compete for the Tony Dron Trophy within the Motor Racing Legends Historic Touring Car Challenge.
As Young has only recently got his hands on this beast it has yet to be refined properly in preparation for the racing programme he has in mind. The tyres have been swapped for crossplies but that’s
about it. The car’s rideheight is too high – for touring not circuit racing yet – and that wonderful growling V8 engine features a heavy flywheel clutch and is running in a detuned state, so it’s not yet as powerful as it should be. But all that at least makes it very driveable in these wet conditions.
There is undeniable chic to heading out on the Brands Hatch circuit in the sort of car once driven by James Hunt. It hasn’t yet had the full benefit of Young’s attention, so the throttle pedal feels unnecessarily stiff and the pedal set-up makes it impossible for me to heel-and-toe on the downshifts. Fortunately, the wide power band of the V8 means we only need third and fourth gears.
The servo brakes are not great, in truth, offering little feel and not much stopping power either (just as Graham describes), but there is little point trying to attack in these difficult conditions anyway. The power-steering also feels a bit strange until you get used to it being there.
But these minor gripes aside, the Camaro – even in its raw state – is still great fun to drive. It feels compliant, which gives it plenty of grip through the corners, and that inspires confidence. It does desperately want to oversteer coming over the crest at Clearways, but fortunately it’s docile enough to remain comfortably under control. It feels a lot like the Jag, only sturdier and quicker – the sort of tank in which you would feel entirely confident heading into battle against whatever the Mustang could throw at you.