"To me, this is the golden era of the Camaro," said legendary car collector and restoration enthusiast Jay Leno. "I think it's the prettiest one, the most focused... Just beautiful lines, and nothing it didn't need to have." While we love every generation of Camaro, we can certainly agree with Jay that the 1969 Z/28 is truly something special. It's nice to watch him reminisce about everything GM did right with this car, which is owned by bestselling author Glenn Stearns.
Stearns explained to Leno that he got this car when he was just 16 years old, and as you might expect, got into a lot of trouble with it. In fact, he got enough tickets behind the wheel that the state of Maryland took away his license. "I couldn't handle the car," he admitted with a sheepish smile.
Despite the speeding tickets, he never crashed it, but his girlfriend at the time saw the writing on the wall and talked him into selling it for $2,500. He bought a sensible but boring VW Rabbit, which proved to be frustratingly unreliable.
A few years later in 1984, Stearns started looking for his old Camaro. Thirty-five years later, through pure chance, he stumbled onto it at an auction. "I was NOT going to leave that auction without it," he told Leno. It cost him 60 times what he sold it for, but he got the car back.
This Z/28 had been painstakingly restored to original specs before it went to auction, down to small details like the radiator hoses and engine bay decals. "Boy, nice restoration," Leno remarked after inspecting it. Stearns had installed Cragar S/S wheels on it back in the day, but it now rides on original Rally wheels with Derby caps.
During the drive, Leno commented on how raw and responsive the car feels. "I can see how you got a lot of tickets in this thing," he said with a grin.
"So it's not going anywhere now, is it?" asked Leno. Stearns' response said it all: "I'll be buried in this thing." Check out the full video from Jay Leno's Garage below:
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