1991 Camaro is Totally Tubular
Jason Harding had it bad for a certain GM show car that made the rounds in the early 90s and decided to do something about it. Check out what happens when one man decides to take a show queen and copy her for his own enjoyment.
That sweet 90's goodness
If this car looks familiar to you it's because it is a tribute to the 1988 Camaro built by Jon Moss, former director of special projects at Chevy, for the 1991 SEMA show. Fast forward to 2001 when the LT5 car was pulled from obscurity and made a part of the Camaro Legends Tour. One that tour is where Camaro enthusiast Jason Harding saw the car and became obsessed with this product of its time.
“As a child of the era, I was immediately drawn to the wild paint scheme,” he says. “I was there with a 1982 pace car but had an ’85 IROC at home that I was doing an LT1/T-56 swap on, and seeing the LT5 under the hood intrigued me all the more, considering my project.”
>>Join the conversation about this Retro LS3 Camaro right here in the LS1 Tech Forum!
You gotta start somewhere
After the tour was over the car returned to General Motors' Heritage Collection where Jason got to see it once more a few years later. However, in 2009 the car was sold at the Scottsdale Barrett-Jackson auction but it never left the thoughts of Harding. He knew that the only way he could satiate his retro Camaro lust was to replicate the car for himself. He started the hunt for the donor car and found this 1991 1LE on Craigslist that was just an astounding three miles away.
“I drove it home because it was only three miles, but the car barely made it,” says Harding. “The fuel was crap and the car overheated. I later discovered a leaking heater core and brown sludge had replaced the coolant.”
>>Join the conversation about this Retro LS3 Camaro right here in the LS1 Tech Forum!
The same... but different
Jason wanted to take things further than what was done before by building a car that would be what GM would have done with both modern OEM parts and restored parts.
“I set up a spot in the garage and started stripping the Camaro right down to the body shell,” Harding says. “I removed every suspension part, chassis bracket, and brake component [and had them] stripped and powder coated semi-gloss black, except for the brake calipers, which were powder coated a color called Blasted Aluminum. The only non-original suspension parts are the trailing arms, Panhard rod, and BMR torque arm.”
>>Join the conversation about this Retro LS3 Camaro right here in the LS1 Tech Forum!
Unconventional answers
Keeping of course with the theme of the original show car Hawks Ronal R15 replica wheels were chosen and painted white and neon yellow before being wrapped in BFGoodrich g-Force Sport Comp 2 tires. Next was the interior where Jason had fresh carpet installed and had resto parts put into complement the seats from a fourth-gen. Unfortunately matching the crazy level of fluorescent yellow from the original car was a maddening search. On the verge of throwing up his hands, Jason turned to Vaughn Custom Sports, a manufacturer of hockey equipment. Yes, you read that right.
“On Facebook, they posted a set of goalie pads with the exact color I was looking for and they sold me a few yards of the material,” says Harding. “What could be better than the ultra-durable leather for goalie pads!”
>>Join the conversation about this Retro LS3 Camaro right here in the LS1 Tech Forum!
Too legit to quit?
When Jason was done with all of the things that he could do to the Camaro he turned things over to Kustom Creations in Sterling Heights, Michigan for bodywork and paint. Those sweet 90's graphics needed the right hands to recreate them and this shop was the perfect place to capture what Jason visualized. To get the proportions and size of the art just right, photos of the original show car were sent off to a graphics company where a vinyl mask was created. This mask was then applied in stages painstakingly to get the overlapping elements replicated perfectly.
“It was a taping and painting nightmare, which took a lot of time and effort,” says Harding. “For the colors, I absolutely loved the original, but I wanted to turn the saturation up a little, so I selected House of Kolor Hawaiian Purple Pearl and Neon Yellow for the graphics.”
>>Join the conversation about this Retro LS3 Camaro right here in the LS1 Tech Forum!
Brackets, brackets, and more brackets
Jason got his hands on a stock LS3 that puts out more than 15% more power than the original LT5 sitting nicely at 430 horsepower. The engine is dressed with Katech valve covers painted hi-lighter yellow, Katech coil relocation brackets, MSD wires, and Katech plug wire boot insulators. Jason did decide to keep the factory TPI snorkel in place to keep things looking like they rolled off a production line.
Hawks Motorsports engine mount brackets along with fourth-gen engine mounts keep the LS3 safe in the third-gen bay. A Howell Engine Developments harness running with a GM E38 controller manage the engine.
“A guy by the name of Pocket on the thirdgen.org forum makes harnesses for LS swaps and part of that is the harness for the gauges,” says Harding. “With this harness, it was surprisingly simple to drive the OEM gauges, a feature I wanted to keep because I wanted to make it look like GM built the car.”
>>Join the conversation about this Retro LS3 Camaro right here in the LS1 Tech Forum!
Finally finished
With that hockey grade leather mentioned before, the car was sent over to Lethal Interiors to have the seats wrapped and the interior trim pieces touched up with accents. The steering wheel, shift knob, and parking brake knob made the journey to Canada to get that neon yellow love added to them. All in all the car looks awesome and would make a pretty rad complement to say a Trapper Keeper notebook and a Swatch watch.
>>Join the conversation about this Retro LS3 Camaro right here in the LS1 Tech Forum!
For help with service of your car, check out the how to section of LS1Tech.com