BETTER THAN PERFECT

THE Z/28 LIKELY NEEDS NO INTRODUCTION. The Camaro sub-model, called out on the window sticker as the $506.60 “Special Performance Equipment” option and with a name taken straight from its Regular Production Order code, was created in 1967 with an eye toward SCCA’s increasingly popular Trans-Am road-racing series. To comply with class rules, the Z/28 came with Camaro’s smallest V-8: the DZ-code 302, rated for 290 hp at 5,800 rpm (actual peak power was probably somewhere well north of the 300 mark) and 290 lb-ft at 4,200 rpm V-8.

The Z/28-only 302 married the 4-inch cylinder bore of the 327 and 350 engines with the old 283’s 3-inch stroke: a combination long known to hot rodders with hogged-out 283s as a “301,” although the factory’s version had large-journal crankshaft bearings and four-bolt main caps, a change made in 1968. The high-revving 302 proved a race-track terror that