Exceptional Pro Touring 1968 Camaro
White Hot Wire: Smoother than a TV news anchor’s cheeks
Brad Erickson says he always wanted a “nice” Camaro. And since he’s been researching and collecting for this one, he’s gotten a pretty fair idea of what nice is. What wasn’t exactly nice was the way this Camaro came up. He bought the crate from a college pal who needed to fund his kids’ college years. His friend and his friend’s father had “restored it” when he was in high school.
“I always told him that if he ever wanted to sell it to call me. I said do you mind if I modify it. He said that was always his plan but he couldn’t afford to and that he needed the money for his kids’ college tuition,” Brad offered. “They’d done the restoration in their garage. It was very ’80s. It looked nice but the tiny V-6 would never cut it. I haven’t driven it much since it was finished, but it’s definitely a head-turner. It’s fun to see the jealous looks on the guys driving modern Camaros and muscle cars. Someday I’ll sell it back to him.”
To get what he wanted the very first time, Brad dragged the project southeast to join up with renaissance man Jeff Schwartz, who never cottoned to using catalog stuff because Schwartz likes to make his own stuff. He is also in league with some of the most prolific talent in the Woodstock, Illinois, environs, especially known for upholstery and paint. One phase led to another but none of it ever left town.
Jeff realized a long time ago that race-car performance no longer required purpose-built track cars. He went on to illuminate his point with a schizoid barge: an impossible Fleetwood Caddy, which wonCar Craft’sReal Street Eliminator competition in 2002. He never looked back. He just went ahead and did it. He’s maniacal about ease of accessibility and the idea that things should bolt on rather than be trial-and-error, cut-and-pasted. To that simplicity, the foundation is a Schwartz G-Machine chassis encompassing square, rectangular, and round sections. Excellent handling emanates from a stiff sub-structure with minimal bending and maximum torsional rigidity.
