Back in the late summer of 2023, I came across a cheap—way too cheap—1968 Chevrolet Camaro project car.
I don’t think of myself as a glutton for punishment, but I do think of myself as someone who loves 1960s GM muscle cars—and a guy who’s not afraid to DIY his way into owning them. Of course, that flies in the face of the fiscally smart advice, which is to buy cars already done.
I’ve given people that advice for years, because it’s true. A project car can easily turn into an expensive, drawn-out experience, and that’s why most of the talking heads will tell you to avoid one. They’re (we’re) usually right. But who follows their own advice?
When the journey is the destination, writing checks for shiny paint and turn-key glory somehow feels like cheating.
The truth is I’d just finished my most ambitious project to date: a 1967 Chevrolet C10 short bed with modern running gear. That truck stretched my skills and also gave me a bunch of new ones—stuff I hadn’t learned when I’d worked as a mechanic from high school through college and beyond.
So there I was, staring at my truck and twiddling my thumbs. That’s when this Camaro crossed my path, with an asking price of $2800.
A couple of things drove what happened next. First, my car-guy calculations (which my wife assures me exist outside of reality) had already suggested I had both the money and the space for something new.
So I needed something new. You get it.
Second, I had just seen basket-case big-block Chevelles and Camaros sell for $20K-plus at the VanDerBrink auction of the Langlitz Collection in Idaho. We’re talking closed-chamber cylinder heads and M22 Rock Crusher four-speeds on pallets. Pistons in boxes.
I watched closely but didn’t bid. The market wasn’t on my side.
I called my friend, Jay, a Chevelle owner and car-guy enabler, when that sale closed. I told him the project I’d been hunting was a lost cause due to the steep price of entry. “When something cheap pops up,” he said, “you’ve just got to jump on it.”
That was prescient advice, it turns out, because two hours later, cheap popped up via a Craigslist ad sent to me by my father.
The next morning, my dad and I drove to Camas, Washington, to see this Camaro, which at first smelled like a Craigslist scam: light copy, scarce info, no photo. I called on it expecting some kind of story—the “send me money to hold it and I’ll give you the address” type.
The seller seemed like a normal guy, though, and the issues he described sounded real. Still, I expected to find a Camaro-shaped strainer with title issues. That’s what $2800 should buy in today’s market.
It turned out to be better than that … depending on whether you’re A) fearless and B) own a welder.
“Someone had the roof off the car at one point. I don’t think they did a very good job of putting it back on,” the seller said as he dropped the rear door of his enclosed car trailer to let in the morning light.
In front of us was a rough Camaro coupe in epoxy primer. It had no front-end sheet metal, doors, outside quarter panels, or trunk floor installed. There was no engine and no transmission. It sat on old Centerlines and flat, cracked BF Goodrich tires.
The body that was intact was clean. It had been primed after being chemically dipped—an expensive process that consists of dipping the entire car in a vat of acid to eliminate all of the old paint and rust. It’s the first step of most serious restoration projects carried out by professional shops.
The Camaro’s floor pan wasn’t rust-colored or epoxy gray—it was E-coat black, meaning a complete reproduction pan had been fitted. I noted multi-leaf rear springs—V-8 Camaro stuff—front disc brakes, and a 9-inch Ford rear axle. “The guy before me was thinking of putting a big-block in it,” said the seller.
As for the top, he was right. There were visible welds about three-quarters of the way up the A-pillars, but they looked solid.
Out back was a different story. The original roof had been hacked off with a torch, and the replacement roof (also torched) was plopped down over this globby mess. A handful of aluminum pop-rivets kept it seated roughly in the wrong place.
A sequence of events came together in my head: Something damaged the original roof years ago, and this old work was probably discovered after the rusty quarter panels had been cut off. The seller couldn’t confirm if I was right.
Regardless, you can’t blame the guy for stopping at that point. But he had everything to keep going: Next to the car were reproduction quarter panels, original doors, both fenders, all the glass, a full interior, the trunk lid, a new trunk floor, and a new cowl-induction hood.
The speedometer, in a box, said 60K miles. Whatever rust had been in the body had been fixed already. Even the doors were solid.
“The cowl area was rusty, so the shop fixed that. They replaced the floor, too.”
“Does all this stuff come with the car?” I asked.
“Sure does,” he said. “I need my trailer back.”
“Sold.”
I didn’t expect to buy a Camaro, but here I was, title in hand.
Initially, I had no plan. My dad and I formed one on the way home: First, fix the top, if possible. Then install the sheet metal to make it a solid roller.
Complete quarter replacement and a trunk floor installation is involved work, and while I’d done jobs like this in the past, the depth here was new to me—the perfect project for a guy with a MIG welder, an understanding wife, and no HOA.
That top was going to require some magic, too.
But how hard could it be? Even if I managed to destroy this Camaro in the process of learning quarter-panel replacement and fixing the roof, the car-guy math still penciled out (minus labor, which never counts). I could part out this car out and make back the money I’d spent buying it. Plus, I had an ace up my sleeve: My dad has a ’68 Camaro, too, and I could use that car as a template for whatever I needed to measure to put this car right. He also has spare parts, including a running 396-cubic-inch big-block date-coded 1968.
Getting the Camaro home took two trucks, two trailers, and two trips. Then I took stock of what I had. Other than the engine and transmission, the only missing pieces were the transmission crossmember, some wiring and some trim.
GM built everything from six-cylinder yawn-mobile Camaros to 375-hp big-block monsters in ’68, but the only way to really know what you’re looking at is via paperwork or forensics. Paperwork was out—all I had was the title. So I started looking closely at the numbers and the details.
The VIN spelled out a 1968 Camaro with a V-8 built in Los Angeles. The trim tag hinted at some other things: 02D meant it was built in the last week of February 1968. TR 749 meant it had black houndstooth custom bucket seats. The paint code was 0-0, which in 1968 meant Corvette Bronze, top and bottom. The Camaro Research Group says only 7% of ’68s were that color.
The car has small-block engine mounts still installed. It also came with a small-block heater box—big-blocks used a different heater core with different inlet and outlet points to account for the wider engine. Finally, it came with a clutch pedal assembly, so the car had a manual transmission—but not a Muncie. If it had been a Muncie car, it would have had a speedometer cable plug removed from the firewall on the right side of the steering column. This one was on the left, so it was probably a low-horse V-8 car with a Saginaw three- or four-speed on the floor.
I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop here on the Cheap Camaro, but as I’ve worked out replacing the trunk floor, refitting the top, installing the quarter panels and fitting all the sheet metal, I’ve ended up with a car that has good body lines, OK gaps, no rust, and loads of potential.
I have dreams of a Day Two Camaro with big and little tires. It needs to be Corvette Bronze over houndstooth again, but to get there, I’ll have to finish all the metal work and then paint it myself. One step at a time. Once all that’s done, the ’68 396 really should live under the car’s cowl hood.
Am I crazy? Probably. Fiscally smart? Absolutely not. But I’m not bored.
Best of luck on the new project. Looking forward to see the progress.
Some folks say it’s only money and time. I’d adapt that attitude. That said, jokingly, it looks like a great project to me. I have certainly made worse purchases. Having the car dipped and all cut apart saves you a ton of expense and hassle, and fixing that roof is very doable. Once done, you won’t have to worry about rust for a long time. I agree that it’s huge to have another car to compare. I’ll bet though, that you are going to quickly realize that there are a ton of parts you need to buy and they will nickle and dime you to death. Once the car is done, you will likely tell yourself it was not such a great idea, and 10 years will go by and you will say to yourself, I could never build one that cheap today. I paid $11,000 7 or so years ago to have my car painted. I say to myself regularly now that it would be more like $15K or more today, if I could find someone willing to do it.
Y’know, even if it is less costly to buy a car already finished, it would bother me not knowing the details of all the work done to get it there. That’s one nice thing about having a project car. You have a much better idea of how well it’s done that way.
The other nice thing is that you can have everything pretty much the way you want it, or at least as close to that as time and budget allow.
Most of the time, indulging in the automotive hobby isn’t going to be a financially wise proposition anyway. If you’re going to use your resources for this stuff, you might as well get what you want from it.