One might think that someone who restores award-winning Yenkos would want a very special Camaro for himself. That’s what Joe Swezey and Brian Henderson, the owners of Super Car Workshop in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, discussed in the mid-1990s. Joe’s dream Camaro was a Le Mans Blue ’69 Camaro with a 427 and a four-speed. That sounds like a tough request, right? The only options left were the extremely rare COPO L72s, ZL-1s, and the 427 conversion Camaros sold by some dealers. Add the color and transmission preferences, and it was like finding a needle in a haystack.

Street Muscle was at the Piston and Power Show in Cleveland, Ohio and we ran into Joe, who told us the backstory of his rare Camaro.

Joe and Brian met a guy named Wade, at Chevy ‘Vette Fest way back in 1997. He had a gorgeous Le Mans Blue Yenko Camaro, and they asked if he had any other cars. Wade said he had a Yenko Chevelle and a 1969 Dick Harrell Camaro that needed to be restored, but he was letting them go because the Yenko Camaro’s build exhausted him. The car was rumored to be Le Mans Blue with a 427 and a four-speed. A needle in the aforementioned haystack was found.

Dick Harrell was known as “Mr. Chevrolet” for his work on modifying, tuning, and racing Bowtie cars, where he broke records and frequently won. He had many achievements in his career, such as being the 1969 AHRA Driver of the Year, and the Driver of the Decade in 1970.

Harrell also led the way in putting 427s into Camaros, Chevy IIs, and Chevelles. He collaborated with dealers like Nickey, Yenko, and Fred Gibb, on different builds. In 1968, he started to sell his own 427 Chevys through a network of outlets, built at Dick Harrell Performance Center in Kansas City, Missouri. He also contributed to the development of the ZL-1 427 for the ’69 Camaro.

Sadly, Harrell lost his life in a Funny Car accident in 1971. Joe found out that Wade’s Super Camaro was one of the 375-hp SS 396-to-blueprinted-427-conversions made at DHPC. It also had headers, a tach, gauges, special paint, wheels, tires, and traction aids. A letter from DHPC confirmed that the Camaro was built there, and came with the sale.

The Camaro had stayed in the same town as a race/show car, and it was in the original owner’s family until around 1995. It had stripes, chrome, and a custom interior, but it only had 17,032 miles on it. When they came back from the show, the guys agreed that a showroom look was what they wanted for a supercar built by Dick Harrell.

However, he knew that buying a car like this was not just a matter of wanting it. He had to consider the financial impact of its price and restoration costs, as well as the time to finish it. A few months went by before Joe reached out to Wade, who said the car was still for sale.

Joe talked to his wife Barb, and they agreed to buy the car. He phoned Wade, who told Joe the car was his. Wade got a lot of calls about the Camaro. He turned down an offer that was $5,000 more than the asking price, and he kept his word with Joe. He said Joe could come and see the car, take it if he liked it, and pay the rest later.

Joe and Brian got to Wisconsin and saw the 427 Camaro. It was mostly intact and not modified for racing, which had worried Joe. They put it in the trailer, and Wade showed them the other offers he’d gotten. Wade told the other buyers the car was sold and he knew Joe was the right guy for the Camaro. The guys then started to collect parts in the spring of 1998, right after they took possession. The Camaro’s velour upholstery had to go, and it needed wheels and tires, and some parts had to be de-chromed.

In 2000, restoration of the car began. The 427cid engine underwent a rebuild in 2003 by the late Mark Brewer from The Motorworks in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Its code-CE (warranty replacement) block was enlarged by .030 inches, its forged-steel crankshaft and connecting rods were restored, and improved JE forged-aluminum domed pistons increased the compression ratio to 13:1.

A Lunati solid-lifter camshaft was chosen, as it had similar specs to the ZL-1 camshaft Harrell used. Rectangular port, closed-chamber iron heads with 2.19/1.88-inch valves, heavy-duty springs, pushrods, and roller-tip rockers were used to top off the engine. He and Brian also bought a parts car there from another project.  They found the original owner’s son and discovered that he’d gotten the 427 Camaro from his father, but then he sold it.

The original owner called Joe months after that trip, and his son translated Spanish into English for him. He told Joe he got the Camaro with the A&A Fiberglass Stinger hood and a “special dual four-barrel intake system,” which boosted the output to 500 hp. He said it didn’t run well with the two carbs and when a fire in the engine ruined the fiberglass hood, he got in touch with Harrell and had a single-four-barrel setup mailed to him.

A cowl-induction hood took the place of the singed Stinger. Luckily, Joe had an original 11,000-mile Dick Harrell Chevelle at that time, which had the same system he needed, so he used it as a reference to find the right Weiand aluminum intake, Carter AFBs, air cleaners, and linkage for the Camaro. An ACDelco fuel pump, recurved factory breaker-point distributor, and the Jardine open headers completed the package. The original M21 four-speed was rebuilt the year before the engine was done.

The body restoration was delayed because customer cars came first at Super Car Workshop, until Joe’s friend, Fran Roberts from Roberts Auto Body in Fayette City offered to let his bodyman. Bodymen Bernie Matway and Bobby Hornack worked on it with Joe overseeing the process to make sure it looked like it came from the factory.

The shell was stripped with chemicals and the underside was sandblasted. The lower front valance was replaced because it had been chromed, but the rest of the original steel panels without rust were kept. Minor flaws were fixed, and filler was used only when needed. Wade had given Joe a correct Stinger hood in the deal, and Joe put it on.

A Glasurit two-stage paint system used several coats of the company’s etching primer before block sanding sessions with papers from 800 grit and up were started. Three coats of basecoat in Le Mans Blue, and a control coat to make sure the metallic looked right, were followed by three coats of clear. Wet sanding used grits from 800 to 2000, while “keeping a bit of orange peel for a factory look,” Joe says. The finish was buffed out with a 3M system.

They connected the 427, which had an 11-inch Centerforce clutch in its bell housing, and the four-speed to the finished subframe and fastened it to the body. Then they put in the rear axle and driveshaft. They also installed a set of old Hurst Dual/Duty street and strip shocks from Brian’s low-mileage Yenko.

Next, they mounted a correct set of 1969 Cragar S/S wheels, with Stahl drag tires and M&H Racemaster slicks. The wheels have rare 7⁄8-inch lug nuts and center caps that don’t have the ‘registered trademark’ logo on them. After they put on the rest of the body panels, they applied a Super Sport stripe, added a color-matched Endura front bumper, put on a mix of restored and NOS trim, and mounted the re-chromed rear bumper. The Dick Harrell Camaro won a Gold Spinner Award at Chevy ’Vette Fest in November when it was done in 2003.

Dick Harrell had a role in many aspects of Chevrolet’s performance history, from drag racing to making supercars for the street and strip.  1969 Camaros that have his name on them are very rare, so Joe Swezey feels lucky and blessed to have found this example.