The 1968 Camaro Branden Aldous’ father received as the last payment for his service center in 2002 was supposed to be restored as a father-son project.
Aldous, who runs a 4,400-square-foot shop called Unique Collision Center in Redmond, Ore., had planned to do the bodywork and paintwork and his dad would do the mechanical work.
That was before Aldous’ father was diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer. Worried about whether his dad would survive to see the finished product, Aldous got to work. “I wanted to get the car done so he could at least drive it and see it,” he says.
Aldous bought the car from his dad and brought it to his house in autumn 2007. He had always liked Camaros and wanted one of his own, anyway. “I remember when I was little kid… [my dad] took us for a ride [in a Camaro].”
At that point the car was just a shell sitting on a jack stand. “No suspension, no doors, no windows, nothing,” he says.
When it was time to start the project, he loaded up a 30-foot trailer that held all of its parts. Then he put the Camaro on a rotisserie to work on its floor and trunk pans, and after that, he got to work replacing the worn-out suspension with new parts.
Under the hood, the Camaro has a 400-cubic-inch Chevy small block engine, which was built with H-beam connecting rods, flat-top pistons and roller rockers. The motor is balanced and blueprinted, too.
An automotive painter by trade, Aldous painted the car himself. He and a friend sprayed the car a deep black with blue pearl stripes on the deck lid.
