If you look close enough you will notice the absence of the familiar blue bowtie. That's because this isn't a Chevrolet Camaro per-say - it's a Motion Performance prepared Camaro, and yes there is a difference, a very big difference.
This is a car that General Motors could never build, not that they didn't want to, the EPA would never allow it.
The history
First off you need to know what and who is Motion Performance and where the Baldwin name came from. It all started with Joel Rosen, who in the 1960s and early 1970s built the now legendary Motion Camaros, Chevelles and Corvettes.
Joel Rosen had so much faith in his products that he offered an
unconditional warranty for is performance cars. His cars carried this message: "We think so much of our Phase III super-cars that we guarantee they will turn at least 120 mph in 11.50
seconds or better with an M/P-approved driver. Phase III cars are completely
street-able, reliable machines that will run these times off the street."
If these cars failed to perform, Rosen would take the car back and
refund the customer. To this day he never had to refund a customer.
Rosen graduated from the street racing scene and became quite well known at area drag strips with his 289 Cobra. He spent most of his time racing a1963 Corvette at Roosevelt
Raceway in Islip & New York National and at Moriches, Long
Island.
In the late 1950s at a service station in Brooklyn, he installed a Clayton Dyno in 1963, Joel got his cool company name from the Motion ignition company. They
pioneered the captive discharge ignition system. When Rosen
moved to Baldwin, Long Island in 1966, just a few miles from Baldwin Chevrolet. Motion
Performance was born at the corner of Atlantic and Albany avenues in
Brooklyn. And the rest is history!
Joel became friends with Baldwin Chevrolet's parts manager who arranged a meeting with the owners, and they loved what he had to offer. Soon after they were building some of the hottest and well known cars of the 1960s and early 1970s. Cars could be bought through the dealership and sent to Motion for their conversions and then sent back to the dealer for delivery.
Now on to this specially built one-of-one, 1969 Motion Phase III Camaro.
This Camaro was born a real Z/28 in 1969, it's owner sent it to Motion Performance in 74' for Joel and his team to work their magic on it. This was one of their rare independent projects that noting to do with the dealership. Joel stated that it featured just about everything Motion had to
offer under its fiberglass hood. After he made the initial shakedown runs, Joel went on to say that this was their most extreme build-up at that time.
Since it was built 45 years ago it only has had 750 miles put on the chassis, with almost all of them a quarter-mile at a time. This car is practically brand new !
The Camaro features the best parts that were available at the time, including a Phase III 427 ZLX engine, a Ford Top-Loader transmission filled Liberty Gears controlled by a
Hurst Ram Rod inline shifter, suspension and axle upgrades, including a
4.88 gear set i the 12-bolt rear end and a set of Lakewood traction bars. For weight savings a complete fiberglass front end. The final cost for the
conversion was close to $12,000. That's more than $65,000 today adjusted
for inflation.
The engine sports a
pair of Holley Dominators, they only just made there debut for the 1970 Pro-Stock season, this was state of the art back then. They're mounted atop a Weiand tunnel ram. In Motion's literature, the engine was described as having 12:1 compression with a .600-plus-lift camshaft, and was completely blueprinted and set up
for Modified Production or Pro Stock.
It was rated at 600 horsepower
and listed for the hefty sum of $2,995 or about $15,000 in today's
dollars.
.
Every element is built for drag racing, from the Hurst inline shifter,
with its separate reverse stick, to the line-lock switch on the shifter handle.
The construction of the car was also detailed in the 1975 edition of Hi-Performance Cars Magazine special "Chevrolet Performance Annual."
PERFORMANCE DATA WAS LISTED AS:
0-60
MPH......................
2.5 sec (est.)
1/4-mile ET................... 11.50 @ 120 mph (est.)
Top
speed.......................125
mph (est.)
In the late 1970's the performance era of upgrading cars was shut down due to an article that was titled- KING KONG LIVES ON LONG ISLAND. This was a story about Motion Performance in Car Craft magazine in 1974, it was about Rosen’s 454
Super Vega. The article came
to the EPA’s attention and Motion
Performance couldn’t escape their radar. The Department of Justice sent Rosen a
cease and desist, directing him to no longer build modified street cars, stating factory emissions devices couldn't be removed or he will will be fined $1000.00 for each emissions device removed.
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