THE FLYING CAMARO.

By Peter M. DeLorenzo 

Editor’s Note: That Peter has lived a charmed and at times crazy automotive life has been well-documented. The son of Tony DeLorenzo, the legendary GM PR chief who ruled from 1957 to 1979 – GM’s glory days – Peter was exposed to the business and the legends of the business from a young age. As he likes to say, “The legends that you read about in books today were either hanging out in our driveway or interacting with our family all the time.” People like Bunkie Knudsen, Ed Cole, Bill Mitchell and Zora Arkus-Duntov, just to name a few, and there were countless others as well. But that is just one dimension to Peter’s automotive life. Today, he recounts another one of his mind-bending stories from the formative years that made The Autoextremist who he is today. - WG

Detroit. To say that the ‘50s and ‘60s were a different era in automotive history is not painting a proper picture of just how different it was. Detroit was much more of a freewheeling mindset back then. Car executives were bold, decisive, conniving, creative and power-hungry personalities who inevitably went with their gut instincts – which could end up being either a recipe for disaster or a huge runaway sales hit on the streets. The only committees you'd find back then were the finance committees – and they never got near the design, engineering, marketing or even the advertising unless there was some sort of a problem. These Car Kings worked flat-out and they partied flat-out, too, ruling their fiefdoms with iron fists, while wielding their power ruthlessly at times to get what they wanted – and rightly so in their minds – as they were some of the most powerful business executives on earth. In short, it was a world that was 180 degrees different from what goes on today.

Growing up immersed in this business was indeed surreal, but even back then I realized that I had been dropped in an alternative universe – an automotive nirvana punctuated by V8s, open pipes, flashes of chrome and the hottest cars of the era. We reveled in it and made the most of every moment, whether it was me riding shotgun with my brother as he – ahem – was teaching himself how to drive fast, or me going for rides with Bill Mitchell in one of the latest GM Styling concepts – including the ’59 Corvette Sting Ray racer, to this day my all-time favorite car – to the times when I started getting behind the wheel myself.

We had borrowed an early production ‘66 Shelby GT 350 Mustang from Ford PR one weekend (GM and Ford PR swapped cars all the time back then – yeah, I know, talk about a different time and a different era), and my brother Tony decided it was time for me to start learning how to drive – and drive a stick at the same time – and the Shelby Mustang seemed like the perfect vehicle to accomplish that. So, we went to an empty shopping center parking lot, plotted out a course, and I drove for a good hour, getting more proficient by the minute. Needless to say, I absolutely loved it. The only problem was that I was a good eighteen months from being able to get my learning permit, and once I started driving, I. Could. Not. Stop.

Because of my parents’ GM travel schedules – they were away a lot – I found the cars sitting in the garage unattended to be too much of a temptation. Why not take them out for a few minutes? What could possibly go wrong? My favorite was an Electric Blue ‘67 Camaro SS coupe that my oldest sister had at the time. Even though it was an automatic, I found it to be quite entertaining, and I started taking it out all the time. 

Now, given that I had been riding shotgun with my brother in countless exploits, I decided that I would set out on my own course of high-speed learning. And my absolute favorite thing to do was to take the Camaro out at night, especially during and after a fresh snowfall, so I could drift around corners in our neighborhood. What made it even better was that our little suburban enclave was patrolled by only two cops (one each shift), and since we referred to them as our “Barney Fifes” we knew their habits and their schedules better than they did, and you can guess what the likelihood of ever getting caught was. But, of course, those nighttime adventures weren’t enough, so, I started driving matter-of-factly, as if I already had my license. And I got bolder and bolder. My nighttime drifting exploits transitioned to me searching out construction sites for new neighborhoods during the day, because the roads were already laid out and paved, and there was usually no one around, a tactic my brother pioneered. 

I found one neighborhood development in particular to be most tantalizing. If I turned off the main road, I could accelerate up to a sweeping, uphill left-hander and drift through it with the power on – in the dry, at almost 50 mph – and safely get through it. I did it several times and regaled my buddies about it. So, one day, as we were waiting for another interminable school day to end, one of my buddies said, “Hey, I want to see this ‘track’ you’ve been racing on. Why don’t we follow you so we can see you take the corner?” Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, so, why the hell not? So as soon as school let out, I went home and got the Camaro out and I proceeded to my private race track with two carloads of my buddies in tow. 

As you can probably imagine, things didn’t work out as planned (No? We are shocked. -WG). I went barreling into the turn faster than I ever had before, because I was determined to put on a show for my friends. I was flying, all pumped up with teenage adrenaline, only to discover as I turned into the apex of the corner that a truck had pulled out of the construction site only moments before, leaving deep tire tracks of mud all over the road. 

You can imagine what happened next.

My painful lesson in “zero grip” was about to unfold as the Camaro instantly washed out to the right, sending me off the road. And before I could do anything, I was staring at a four-foot high (at least) and twelve-foot wide mound of dirt with nowhere to go. I hit it square-on (fortunately), and I was launched into the air. It was one of those “hello sky” moments as I got a brief look at the cloudy afternoon horizon punctuated by an eerie silence, before the Camaro landed with a massive thud on the other side. To hear my buddies tell it, all they recall seeing was the bottom of the Camaro as it disappeared over the dirt pile. The car, amazingly enough, was only slightly damaged, with the front valance crushed and the left rear corner slightly banged up. Although I was highly embarrassed, my buddies thought it was the coolest thing ever, and we managed to convince a construction guy to help us pull the Camaro out of the mud with a rope.

The story gets even more surreal from there. I called Tony, told him what happened, and we hatched a plan to take the Camaro down to Hanley Dawson Chevrolet to get it fixed before my sister came home from out of town. The dealership did a terrific job, but it wasn’t ready by the time my sister got home, so we made up some story about an oil leak that needed to be fixed, and we brought the Camaro home two days later.

But, of course, my sister wasn’t fooled. She knew something wasn’t right, especially given the fact that the two of us were involved. But she wasn’t able to determine exactly what was wrong with our story. It was only later that we realized that the body shop put the wrong front valance panel on the car. Her Camaro had hideaway headlights. The valance panel was for a Camaro with fixed headlights. She never noticed and we never said a word.

It is just one of those stories that never gets old retelling, and the “Flying Camaro” will always be a memorable part of me. 

And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.