Classic Industries is well known amongst collector car owners and restoration shops as one of the go-to companies for OE replacement parts, performance parts, and hard to find, out-of-production trim pieces for GM and Mopar vehicles. Every year at SEMA, they wow the crowd with a display of restored or resto-modded cars that keeps the crowd gathered around.
Last year, Classic had a Yenko Camaro belonging to none other than Reggie Jackson, and a very cool 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible from their Resto-mod lineup. Our friend Dan Woods, host of Chop Cut Rebuild, was on hand for pictures, autographs, and to show us the build that was done with parts from Classic Industries’ Tri-Five catalog.
This year, we’ll all be treated again to a couple of beauties in the form of classic Camaro iron. The first car is a Dick Harrell 1969 427 Camaro, and the second is Tim Allen’s own 1968 Camaro, inspired by the legendary Smokey Yunick. Both cars will showcase what a classic Camaro was in the 1960s, and what it can be today. With parts from Classic Industries, scouring the wrecking yards for hard to find trim parts can be a thing of the past, let alone the time and effort it takes to restore old trim pieces.
Drag racing pioneer “Mr. Chevrolet” Dick Harrell received the car as a brand new SS 396 Camaro. It left the lot and was sent to the Dick Harrell Performance Center, where it was transformed into a 427 Camaro. It’s a 1 of 10 Dick Harrell Camaro that highlights the best of performance components that were available back in the day, and is now part of the Classic Industries collection.
Tim Allen’s ’68 Camaro was built by Bodie Stroud, with some modernization of some of the best performance components available today. Allen had said he raced lots of cool musclecars back in the ’60s and ’70s, but one car stuck in his mind. It was a friends 327 1968 Camaro, and that was the basis of this build.
But Allen went a bit further than that stock Camaro, stabbing a 505 horsepower LS7 427 between the fenders, with steering and suspension by Detroit Speed Engineering, Brembo brakes, and lots of other touches. Combined with his love for the cars that Smokey Yunick was responsible for, he ended up with the car you see here. Allen has been known to share with us some very cool cars from his own collection, and this Camaro has risen to the top as one of our favorites.
You might have seen Allen’s car on the Speed Channel’s Hot Rod TV, where the build was done using parts supplied by Classic Industries. If you’ve got a Camaro project of your own, head on over to Classic Industries’ web site and check out the free catalog that you can download to help you get your project back on the ground, and back on the road. Of course, they have catalogs for several other Classic GM vehicles, and Mopar A, B and E body cars as well.