Turns out this Camaro was fueled by the inspiration of the cars his dad and his dad’s friends owned and drove back in the day. You see, Mike pulled off some kind of miracle to get this car built by the one and only Nobu Oshiro—an absolute legend in West Coast muscle car lore. Oshiro owned and operated Nobu’s Auto Lab—an extremely successful and well-known high-performance shop in Hollywood, California, that specialized in dyno tuning from 1966 to 1982. Even after shutting down his shop, Oshiro retained his legendary status, as his skills and knowledge have remained highly sought after within the performance community.

“When Mike first contacted me to find and build a Camaro for him, I couldn’t say ‘no!’ fast enough,” Oshiro admits. While he still had a love for making cool cars go fast, Oshiro was more interested in working on cars for himself now (something he couldn’t always focus on while running his shop) and taking things a little slower in his later years (he is currently 83 years old). “Once Mike told me that he was soon moving from our shared city of Los Angeles to my old hometown of Honolulu, Hawaii, and that a couple of his friends’ dads still own and drive the cars that I built for them in the past, I felt a connection there and a desire to take on this project.”

“While I was still surprised to have [Oshiro] on board with this build, the agreement did come with two major terms of his that were non-negotiable,” Mike says. “The first term was to never ask [Oshiro] about a timeline when the car would be finished (the project spanned a total of six years from start to finish). The other order of business was to never ask about what the final cost of the project would be. I understood this request completely. There’s a process there that has served [Oshiro] well throughout his successful career and who was I to go against his wishes?” A verbal agreement and a handshake were enough to seal the deal between the two gentlemen of different generations.

It didn’t take long for Oshiro to track down the perfect Camaro to serve as the base for the project. He found this ’68 at a friend’s body shop, and aside from some existing damage to the front and rear fenders, the car was near perfect in condition. Before Mike realized, Oshiro was already planning the next stages of the build. His approach to putting cars together has stayed true to how he would’ve done things back in the ’60s. The amount of OEM replacement parts or factory-reconditioned components far outweighs the use of brand-new aftermarket accessories—even the size of the 15-inch wheels remains modest in diameter to ring true to how they would’ve been selected if this car was customized 50 years ago.

Of course there’s a place for new parts and pieces, as Oshiro used them quite extensively under the hood to outfit the Dart Big M iron block engine as well as the front suspension components sourced through Warren Jung of Pacific Brake Co. in Monterey Park, California. The rear end of the frame has been outfitted with a Chris Alston’s Pro Street four-link and features all the bells and whistles throughout the chassis system. The approach to this build and those he completed years ago is still the same, and those familiar with what a Nobu Oshiro–built car is and what it is not, recognize the fact that the man has not missed a beat since his Auto Lab days in Hollywood.