Does this look like a a 10-second street car to you?

Can you remember one of the more memorable things that happened to you in 1978? Kevin Jolley can, and he told us that one of them was buying this second-gen Chevrolet Camaro. According to Kevin, “It was sitting along the side of the road outside of a trailer park with a faded for sale sign in the window.

The car as found in 1978.

I drove by it every day in my Gremlin while on my way to work.” No one will argue that it’s tough to make a Gremlin cool, and since Kevin always liked the Camaro body style, he sold the Gremmy, and tracked down the guy who owned the Chevy. It didn’t take a lot of negotiations, and Kevin purchased the pony car for $1,500.

Under the hood you’ll find an MSD Pro Billet Distributor and 6AL digital box, an MSD 160-amp alternator, Billet Specialties pulleys, a Be Cool radiator, fans, and electronics, and we can’t forget the Ring Brothers billet hood hinges.

Kevin continued, “It had a 350 cubic-inch small-block with a compression ratio of 11.0:1. Up top was an Edelbrock Torker manifold, and the car also had headers and turbo mufflers. I drove the car, and even showed and raced the crap out of it while I was in high school and college.” While Kevin was enjoying his car, he was also slowly taking the time to make sure that it reflected his personal taste. “During this time, I would take parts off of it and take them to the chrome shop to be plated – hood hinges, brackets, fender supports, that kind of stuff.”

The paint on a car can get you noticed or avoided, and how old would you guess this paint job is? According to Kevin, it was painted in 1984. That’s correct, the paint on the car is 32 years old.

Kevin surmised, “It is a House of Kolor Oriental Blue Kandy with three pearl shades added; Silver white, Blue, and red. There is also a dusting of metallic in there, and the color changes depending on the light.”

One of the projects that Kevin tackled while he was driving the car, was to restore the interior. Kevin likes the look that the factory delivered, so he didn’t stray too far from a stock appearance. He did add a few Auto Meter Pro Comp gauges to monitor the vital signs of the engine.

Getting back to the engine, the small-block that was in the car when Kevin acquired it was replaced in 2008 with another 350 cubic-inch small-block, but this one features a .060-inch overbore, a billet-steel large-journal crankshaft from a 327ci small-block, Crower connecting rods, ported heads, a Crower roller cam, Harland Sharp roller rockers, and a Victor Jr intake with a Holley 750 cfm carburetor. When the engine was assembled, the compression ratio came in a whopping 14.0:1. Kevin chuckled, “She makes 775 horsepower, and has run 10.35 at 128 mph in the quarter-mile.

Since Kevin got married in 1989, he has continued to show the car in northern California, and raise a family, and he finished by saying, “My boys were getting their driver’s licenses in 2008, so that’s why I put the car back to the streetable-looking version that you see today.