General Motors found themselves wrong footed by the Mustang when it was introduced in April 1964. Chevrolet designers were just putting the finishing touches to a reskinned Corvair for 1965 and believed that its engineering sophistication was what the public wanted. Ralph Nader ended all that when he published his book 'Unsafe At Any Speed' in November 1965. Ford had sold 1.3 million Mustangs before the Camaro was even put on sale in 1966. A small, in-house team under Irv Rybicki started the design in August 1964 and management go ahead was given for the new 'F' car in early 1965.

The Camaro was a remarkably clean design with few of the unnecessary adornments usually incorporated in car design of the time. Influenced by the 'Coke Bottle' theme, which was popular with GM designers (leading to the Corvette), the design was good enough to influence William Towns, when designing the Aston Martin V8 a decade later.

From the outset the Camaro was designed to be better than the Mustang. Its semi-unitised construction with front subframe mounted by rubber biscuits gave a wider track than equivalent Mustangs as well as a quieter ride, and the flexibility to upgrade to larger engines, even before the late 60's horsepower race began in earnest. The use of the Chevelle rear axle gave the Camaro a wider rear track than initially planned. All but the high performance models were equipped with monoleaf rear springs, and axle wind up was not totally eliminated until staggered shock absorbers were instigated for the 1968 model. One problem which manifested itself quite early on with the convertibles was the tendency to shake under certain conditions. Harmonic dampers were found to be the answer when installed in the boot - chassis engineers termed these 'cocktail shakers'. The famous Chevy small block was available in several states of tune, from a 327 CID two barrel, to a very quick 350 CID four barrel, which came as part of the SS350 package.

The Camaro was launched on to the U.S. market in 1966 (as a '67) with a plethora of options and variables, and 220,906 1967 models were sold of which 25,141 were convertibles but only 602 Z/28's.

1968

1968 was the year of Woodstock, Jimmi Hendrix and the student riots in Paris. The war in Vietnam was gathering pace and the Flower Power was in vogue. 1968 heralded the improved Camaro. Not much was different from the 1967, but aficionados will have picked out the lack of front quarter windows and the inclusion of sidemarker lights which became mandatory for all U.S. cars in 1968. The front grill came to more of a point with rectangular sidelights and the grill was painted silver instead of matt black. All SS396 cars had a matt black rear panel.

Rally wheels were available in 15" (P-28) size for the first time. The engineering improvements included staggered shock absorbers to eliminate axle wind up and multileaf springs were available on the more powerful V8's. Larger body mounts were fitted and the Turbo Hydromatic auto was available for the first time.

The interior received some attention with the additional gauges arranged in a sawtooth pattern, and the hard to find 'Tick Tock Tach' with silver background combined a rev counter and a clock. The dash padding wrapped around the dash for the first time. Astro ventilation was installed, thus enabling the front quarter lights to be discarded. The metal inner door cappings were removed and replaced by complete vinyl door panels.

1968 could be called the year of the Z/28 because it really came into its own that year. The Z/28 was only a delayed option package for the 1967 model (only 602 were sold).

In 1968 the model was so designated as Z/28, having originally being nothing more than an RPO identification number. But Z/28 had a special ring to it and so Chevrolet stuck with it. This was helped by Mark Donohue's success for the Penske team in the Trans-Am series. He won 10 out of 13 races in 1968 and Chevrolet sold 7,199 Z/28's.

If comparing '67 and '68 models for desirability now, they rate a toss up. The '67 has the advantage of being the first model but the '68 models had better suspension and a more liveable interior. Overall, 235,147 models were sold in 1968 as against 220,907 in 1967. Unmolested Z/28's are very rare and must rate as very desirable.