BUT this vibrant, big-cubed ’68, branded SPOILTA, is Shirley’s favourite Camaro – and it’s all hers.

This article was first published in the December 2019 issue of Street Machine

So, you kind of like Camaros, Shirley?

I’m totally in love with first-gen Camaros. I love the shape, and they drive fantastic. We have Greg’s ’69 Camaro, ‘Texas Pig’ [SM, Sep ’19], his ’68 Historic race car and his ’69 Targa car, and then there’s my two ’68s. Generally if there’s a Camaro for sale around here, people call Greg to see if we want to buy it.

You have two ’68 Camaros?

Yes. My Old Girl, which was built seven years ago, is my daily, and now this one. Old Girl has no air conditioning, so one hot summer day when I mentioned to Greg that it’d be nice to add cooling to the Camaro he said it’d be easier to build a new car!

Wow, so how did the build go down?

I had a lot more input with this build than the last one. We already had a ’68 shell in the shed that we’d bought locally and it had all of the bits with it. The body was then blasted to see what was there – and also what wasn’t. Thankfully, it was a good shell. Greg, with help from our panel-beater mate Rob Kite, did a full rotisserie resto, and overall the build took three years. They also added Wilwood disc brakes all ’round, DSE front suspension and DSE rear leaves.

Nice donk!

I like big-blocks, so Greg looked into the Scott Shafiroff motors and we decided on the Chev 540ci Ultra Street. Greg let them know that the 540ci was for my car and we didn’t want it too savage or ridiculous for the street. Behind is a TH400 and Moser nine-inch diff.

Did you choose the colour?

Oh yes! Both of my Camaros are painted in the same True Red. Greg said that I could pick whatever colour I wanted and then suggested painting it black so that I didn’t have two red ’68 Camaros. But I felt that if it was black, then it wasn’t truly my car, so I was going to back away from the whole project. But I won, and I really love the red, as the colour just pops – thanks to painter Aaron ‘Bunga’ Matthews.

Tell us about the SPOILTA plates.

I’ve had them for years; I wanted Spoilt Bitch, as everyone calls me that, but the department wouldn’t let me have those. And as SPOILT was already taken, I brainstormed with a friend and we came up with SPOILTA, like ‘spoilt, eh’?

What’s next for SPOILTA?

She’s going to be my daily. I’m going to sell Old Girl, as I can’t have two red ’68 Camaros! It kills me to sell it, but we can’t drive them all. We do coffee and cars events, but mostly it’s just going to the shops, and heading out to Busselton and Margaret River for lunch. I really do enjoy driving it.

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