Blackdog Speed Shop 1969 Pro Touring Camaro
In For a Pound: “Something was destined to die.”—anonymous
At first, Blackdog Speed Shop wasn’t interested in traditional hot rods per se. They were interested in fast cars, as in race cars, and they had a natural bent for road course arenas. They got their beaks wet in 2002 when they ran Corvettes in SCCA and World Challenge events. They got better. They got ballsier. They got so good people started coming to them to build their race cars … and another business was summarily created. Concurrently, they had been bringing hot rods into the world as well.
With their superior scratch-build skills they can make anything from Showroom Stock T1 C5 Corvettes to Speed GT C6 Corvettes. Now they concentrate on the Pirelli World Challenge series in GTS Sprint, building and racing sixth-gen Camaro GT4.Rs. They’ve won that championship at least three times.
If it occurs that the two businesses often collide, you’d be right. A fly on the wall told us this story. In 2008, Blackdog made the decision to build a Pro Touring hot rod and based it on a Dynacorn ’69 Camaro body. Sometimes it’s cheaper and quicker to use complete systems wrought by top-notch vendors than to spend the time developing, testing, and building your own stuff. When the Dynacorn project began, Blackdog immediately sourced the chassis and suspension bits from Detroit Speed (DSE). For the bullet, they called Goodwin Competition in Omro, Wisconsin. Goodwin rose up with a bold LS variant.
The DSE suspension was being installed when the prototype 510-incher came through the dock door. So that the Blackdog Camaro could juke like a peregrine falcon, the DSE foundation includes Koni coilover shock absorbers and is braced by gordo Brembos, 14-inch plates with six- and four-piston calipers. Its oversize rollers are lightweight one-piece Forgeline CF1 Black Chrome rims turning 295/35R18 and 355/30R19 Pirelli P Zeros.
“The team had a race-proven sequential gearbox to put behind it,” said the fly. “Within a few weeks they had a roller … and just like that the work came to a halt. It seemed as quickly as the project had gotten started it now seemed destined to die. The professional racing side of the business needed everyone’s attention. As race wins started piling up and then the championships, the Camaro got pushed into a corner and covered up.”
Several years went by, more team members got hired, and in May 2014 the Dynacorn Camaro was uncovered for what was supposed to be the third and final time. The team decided to debut the car at the Chicago World of Wheels in March of the following year. That left them 10 months to complete; a relatively short period to build a complete car. This restrictive time frame meant that everything had to go right—no paint jail, no upholstery jail, and no late changes in direction.
