hen acquiring a new project car, some start the journey with a rusted hulk knowing the road ahead includes the daunting task of stitching in new sheet metal from bumper to bumper, while others are fortunate to start off with a fully restored classic that whispers, “drive me now and change me later.” For most, that solid base is a great starting point to move forward building the car they’ve always wanted. Next comes finding the time, the funds, and having the stars align just right to make it all happen.

Joe Benedetto found this 1966 Nova back in 1999 in a humble newspaper listing introducing him to an original restoration in excellent condition. The ad didn’t lie. The Nova was clean, straight, and honest. The sheet metal hadn’t been chewed up by time and poor decisions. Joe didn’t hesitate, and just like that, the Nova became less of a purchase and more of a passport.

here’s an old saying that goes, “If you’ve got the fangs, just sink ’em in.” Well, if Joe Canon’s 1967 Chevelle was an animal, it certainly would possess a hefty set of choppers just waiting to gnaw its way through the competition. This big-block, big-tire, behemoth has the teeth where it counts and responds to the competition with a hearty “chomp,” never biting off more than it can chew.

Joe’s run up to owning this incredible muscle car was not achieved out on the macadam, but rather more or less by playing in the dirt. “My early experiences weren’t with cars, but dirt bikes and ATVs. Those were my main interests while growing up. It wasn’t until I was 35 years old that I was introduced to the muscle car scene by my friend, Mike. He had a 1972 split-bumper Camaro and I was instantly hooked the moment I laid eyes on it. We started going to a lot of car shows together, and I quickly fell in love with the hobby,” Joe states.

here’s an old saying that goes, “If you’ve got the fangs, just sink ’em in.” Well, if Joe Canon’s 1967 Chevelle was an animal, it certainly would possess a hefty set of choppers just waiting to gnaw its way through the competition. This big-block, big-tire, behemoth has the teeth where it counts and responds to the competition with a hearty “chomp,” never biting off more than it can chew.

Joe’s run up to owning this incredible muscle car was not achieved out on the macadam, but rather more or less by playing in the dirt. “My early experiences weren’t with cars, but dirt bikes and ATVs. Those were my main interests while growing up. It wasn’t until I was 35 years old that I was introduced to the muscle car scene by my friend, Mike. He had a 1972 split-bumper Camaro and I was instantly hooked the moment I laid eyes on it. We started going to a lot of car shows together, and I quickly fell in love with the hobby,” Joe states.

he Grand National Roadster Show is full of cars that scream for attention. Andrew Topolski’s 1968 Camaro isn’t one of them. It didn’t need to be. Sitting in Blazing Blue under the lights, the car projects a kind of quiet authority—stance locked in, proportions dead-on, details sharpened rather than exaggerated. It’s the kind of Camaro that makes people stop, tilt their heads, and come back for another look. That’s exactly what Andrew and builder Jimmy Shine set out to create: a modern street fighter with old-school instincts.

Andrew, a 43-year-old electrical engineer from the Bay Area now living in Orange County, didn’t begin his automotive life in the muscle car world. He grew up in the import era, wrenching on small-displacement machines with friends and chasing backroads outside Hollister. But the real imprint came earlier, riding shotgun in his dad’s 1982 Z28. “He did burnouts and donuts,” Andrew recalls. “I was a little scared but excited at the same time.” That cocktail of fear and thrill never left him.

By 2019, he was ready for a first-gen Camaro—specifically a ’68. Where the ’69 is all squared-off aggression, the ’68 carries a sleeker, more elemental line. He found one that checked the right boxes: manual transmission, the right year, the right vibe. But the car had been cosmetically “rescued” in a way that hid more than it fixed. Rust had been skim-coated instead of repaired, and the bodywork was a patchwork of good intentions and bad technique. “He put a fine line of Bondo through the whole thing… right over really bad rust,” Andrew says. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a foundation.

n June of 1957 all the major American car companies signed onto the Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) factory racing ban. In the ensuing years management at Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac devised clever ways to get around the agreement, including through high-performance option packages that made cars nearly race-ready right off the showroom floor and covert “heavy-duty parts testing and developing” support for privateer racers. Initially, Ford and Chrysler were slightly more faithful to the AMA ban but by the early ’60s they too effectively ignored the agreement’s prohibitions, pouring huge amounts of money and technical resources into many different forms of racing.

The de facto abandonment of the 1957 AMA racing prohibition set the stage for one of the most competitive and entertaining racing series of all time. When created in 1966 it was called the Trans-American Sedan Championship, but the following year “sedan” was dropped and it was thereafter known as the Trans-American Championship, or simply the Trans-Am Championship.

Trans-Am was open to any FIA Group 1 and Group 2 cars, which in 1966 included Ford Mustangs, Dodge Darts, and Plymouth Barracudas. Ford won the 1966 Over 2 Liter class championship on the strength of four wins in the seven-race series. The schedule expanded to 12 races in 1967 and Ford again won the large-displacement championship, but there was a new competitor that put Dearborn on notice that its dominance was in jeopardy moving forward. That new entrant was a Chevrolet Camaro, but it was no ordinary Camaro—it was a Z/28 and it was fielded by Roger Penske and driven by Mark Donohue.