My Classic 1968 Camaro Convertible, and my 1920 Classic Dad!
Chapter 13.
Well, here she is. After more than six months in the shop.
Many thanks to Dusty, Jim, Jason and Cory. The crew at River
Trails Auto Body.
They restored my Camaro with the attention to detail,
and no excuses quality that I was told to expect. Not to mention putting up
with me at least once or twice a week while I took over 350 photographs
of the progress during the restoration.
After thoughts: The things people notice.
We have participated in several local car shows and lots of cruise-ins. One of the many nice things about these events, is that you inevitably meet people who know more about your car than you do.
As it turns out, the feature that most people notice has been the location of the gear shifter. Most first generation Camaros, whether they had the automatic transmissions or 4 speed manual transmissions, were equipped with a console and a floor mounted shifter. The exceptions to this were the Camaros that were built with the "Strato-back full-width front bench seat" option, which were available only on coupes with automatic transmissions, never on convertibles. The presence of the front bench seat forced the gear shifter to the steering column. My convertible came equipped with standard bucket seats (717 on the cowl tag) and the shifter on the column. Apparently, very rare!
The second most asked question has been a toss up between the factory air conditioning and explaining what the vibration dampeners are for, what’s inside them and how they work.
Lastly, the color of the convertible top. The two most common options were a black top or a white top, available on all of the 1967 thru 1969 Camaro convertibles. My Camaro came with a factory blue convertible top (C4 on the cowl tag) and was the only other color option.
By the numbers, this was a rarely chosen option, mainly because it was only offered on Camaro's that were painted white or blue. In 1968, only 9% of all Camaro's (Convertibles and Coupes) were painted Ermine White. If you do the math, there were only (approximately) 1,800 Ermine White Camaro Convertibles made in 1968. It would be great to know how many of those 1,800 had blue convertible tops! Haven't been able to come up with those numbers, yet.
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