ou ever go to a car show just to look around and appreciate the cars with no intention to buy? We do all the time, same goes for Ed Nash … usually. He and his wife, Terry, go to these events because they like vintage muscle cars and to promote their business, Chassis Crafters in Daytona Beach, Florida. “We were at a local car show when Terry spotted a cool Chevy pickup, and while giving it a look she struck up a conversation with the owner, Jeromie Fehrenbach, from Sterling Customs Hot Rod Shop. She told Fehrenbach that they brought a customer’s ’71 Camaro to display in their booth,” Ed relays. “[Fehrenbach] mentioned he had ’72 Camaro project for sale at his shop in Blue Ridge, Georgia, that a customer had started then backed out.” Coincidentally, Blue Ridge is where Ed and Terry spend a good amount of time vacationing.

On their next trip up they made a point to stop by Fehrenbach’s shop to check out the Camaro. Turns out the owner of the project was going for a patriotic look as the radiator and core support were painted blue and white and had red suspension components. “It wasn’t our style and the body needed some work, but it came with a freshly built 10-bolt with a new Auburn Gear centersection, so we ended up buying the car,” Ed says. “It was basically just a shell, a rearend, and some trim pieces.”

Ed is well-versed in second-gen Camaros, so he was itching to start digging into the project, unfortunately when you own a hot rod shop, personal vehicles take a back seat to customer cars, so the build took several years as Ed and his righthand man Steve Ward were only able to pick at it when the shop got slow or afterhours.

Being a chassis guy, Ed provided the F-body with one of his shop’s custom Chassis Crafters’ subframes and loaded it with C6 Corvette spindles and rack-and-pinion steering. Double-adjustable coilover shocks and 550-pound springs came from QA1 and he dialed in a splined NASCAR-style torsion bar. Out back is a Chassis Crafters four-link rearend decked out with 250-pound springs and QA1 dampers. A Panhard bar ensures everything remains centered.

Sticking with the Corvette goods, Ed employed C6 binders on all four corners (13-inch rotors in front, 12-inch rotors in rear) that work in concert with a manual Wilwood brake master for more-than-efficient stopping power. A set of Coy’s C5 Gunmetal wheels (18×8 front, 20×10 rear) join the cast and are wrapped in Nitto NT555 rubber, 245/40R18 and 315/35R20, respectively. Ed and Steve grafted in a pair of Detroit Speed mini-tubs to provide ample real estate for the modern-sized rolling stock out back.

With the suspension dialed in, Ed motivated the second-gen with a 5.3 LS yanked from a crushed Tahoe. He upped the power with a Texas Speed camshaft and valvesprings, then bolted on a set of Texas Speed ported and polished heads for a more potent performer. A FiTech intake houses a Holley Terminator X EFI system, which supplies a precise air/fuel mix to the mill. That intake tube is a Chassis Crafters metal-fabbed one-off topped with a Vibrant Performance element. Ultimate Headers are mated to a custom 2.5-inch 304 stainless exhaust topped with MagnaFlow mufflers. Ed spruced up the engine bay with a smoothed firewall, custom-painted Eddie Motorsports valve covers, CVF Racing hood hinges, and set of in-house custom-fabbed inner wheelwells all held together with Diamond Engineering fasteners. Ed confessed he wasn’t out to set any land speed records with this car, but with over 450 hp it offers enough grit for weekend autocross events and makes for a pretty badass street machine. Ed also uses the car as a calling card to show off his shop’s ability to build gorgeous vintage muscle cars.