Ron Rhodes has built a legendary drag racing resume behind the wheel of his 1968 Camaro. While race cars like Ron’s Camaro are fun, you can only really enjoy them at the track. Ron wanted a fun street/strip car to play with, so he took a basket case 1967 that was living in a shed and turned it into a killer ride.
For those who don’t follow radial racing, Ron has owned his infamous 1968 Camaro since he was 14 years old. Ron drove the Camaro when he was in high school and it was just a 13-second street car. Well, over the years the Camaro got much faster, and it has won just about every big X275 race out there. Recently, Ron smashed the nitrous X275 record with a 4.08-second pass at over 180 mph. To say Ron and his Camaro have come a long way is an understatement.
Whether Ron is working on a build for a customer at his shop Rhodes Custom Auto or his own projects, the goal is simple, perfection. Not a single corner is cut, and nothing is ever just “good enough” it has to look like a work of art. This particular Camaro was ready to challenge Ron and his approach to doing things because it was literally in pieces when he got it.
“I got this car, like, 25 years ago as a trade on some work I was doing for a customer. It was your typical restoration that someone started and didn’t finish, so it was just a pile of parts. Somebody had started the build and found out how hard it was to finish a project like this, so they just stopped and left it as a basket case,” Ron says.
Things got busy for Ron and the Camaro sat in a storage shed for nearly 15 years before his son, Ronny, became interested in the car. Ronny started to put the Camaro back together as his own ride until he scored his grandfather’s old race car. The Camaro once again was put on the back burner with no clear future. Well, the Camaro’s fortunes changed when Ron got tired of the unfinished project taking up space and began to work on the car once again.
Ron had a vision for the Camaro and he was ready to bring it to life.
“I wanted to build something like what you would have seen during my era of growing up and this is the kind of cars people had. The cool cars were running around with little tires on the front and big tires on the rear, they just looked tough. I always wanted a big-block car because I love the flag they had on the fenders, so of course this car was going to get a big-block engine of some kind,” Ron explains.
Ron followed his plan and started to create a…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at DragzineDragzine…