Chad Ryker’s ’68 Camaro is a Pro Touring Machine You Could Drive Every Day
Chad Ryker’s ’68 Camaro is a Pro Touring machine you could drive every day
If there was one gauge in the dash that could measure fun, what would it be? Would it measure adrenaline-inducing rpm? Seat-pinning boost? We’d argue that such a gauge already does exist in every Chevrolet muscle car. Its readout is glanced at often, but without fervor. It’s the odometer; an hourglass into road trips, track time, and memories. If any gauge were a real-life fun-ometer, this is it.
For Chad Ryker and his ’68 Camaro, the odometer ticks upward on a nearly daily basis. It’s a timeline of the many events he’s competed in and won and cherished family memories.
This year, in addition to the Optima Challenge series events, SCCA events, and copious street miles Ryker tacked onto his odometer, he included the 2018 Super Chevy Muscle Car Challenge presented by Falken Tires.
Once every year, Super Chevy hosts a put-up-or-shut-up style suspension challenge and invites suspension manufacturers to show the world what they’ve got. It’s an all-inclusive shootout that tests suspensions of all styles, cost tiers, and ideologies and puts them to work on a road course, slalom, and 100-yard dash. Like last year’s event, the 2018 Muscle Car Challenge took place in sunny Fontana, California, and had a great turnout of awesome manufacturers ready to go toe-to-toe, tire-to-pavement, and pedal-to-the-metal to prove they are just as hard core as their customers. Ryker’s car represented Team Wilwood Engineering.
Car and Driver
Like most of us, Ryker’s obsession with cars began in his early years. “My gateway to cars and hot rods was growing up with a family ski boat that was a jet boat from the ’70s with a 455ci Olds in it,” he said. “It was loud and noisy and cool.”
Always a fan of early Camaros, he purchased his ’68 in 2006 and has now owned the car for 13 years. “It was an abandoned project, painted but in a roller condition, that I did the mechanicals on,” said Ryker. “I did my first track day in 2009 and started getting into Pro Touring and making it handle. Eventually, I started getting more serious.”
Serious meant better, more competition-ready parts, and setting the car up to be a contender in series like Optima Ultimate Street Car and SCCA. Upgrades were completed in 2014 and in 2015 Ryker started racing the Camaro.
“It’s always been in the top four or five in points [in Optima competition] since I started doing three or more events,” said Ryker. “It’s podiumed in the GTV [vintage] class several times. I won GTV in Vegas at the opener last year and took second at Pikes Peak.”
Ryker has put 41,000 miles on it since it hit the pavement in its current (third) iteration in 2015, 60,0000 miles since he started driving it in 2007. He drives it to work, to the track and back––once as far as Circuit of the Americas for an Optima event––and as much as he can.
