Home-Built Hero: Justin Mills’ First-Gen Camaro

If you’re like me, you take the fact that you can hop in your classic hot rod at any time and go for a drive. It’s easy. However, how would you feel if you couldn’t just go out to the garage and take your car out on the town? For Justin Mills, that is a daily fact of life.

The reason Justin is unable to cruise whenever he wishes is that his job keeps him overseas. In fact, before he purchased this ’68 Camaro, he was In another country, searching online for the perfect ride. He was able to locate this car in Daytona, Florida, but since he was working several thousands of miles away, he was physically unable to take a personal look at the car before the purchase. That’s where his dad, Greg Mills, joins the story. “The Daytona dealership is only about an hour from my house,” says Greg. “After I went and inspected the car, Justin bought it while he was in Iraq and didn’t see it for eight months.”

first-gen Camaro

Although Justin does not have a lot of information about what’s inside the engine, it has been a reliable performer.

Once Justin did make it home and got a proper introduction to the first-gen Camaro, he wasted no time personalizing the car. One of the first things he did was replace the aftermarket wheels with a set of Rallys to give it the stock-ish appearance. When Justin is home with his first-gen, he uses it as his daily driver, so power steering was added to make things a little easier.

When Justin purchased the car, it was more of a restomod, and the interior was indicative of that vibe. To regain some of the stock feel, he removed the aftermarket gauge cluster and returned a factory dash layout to its rightful location. If you notice the shifter poking through the floor, it manipulated four gears when Justin purchased the car. Now, however, it allows him to grab five gears. Since Justin — and his dad — drive the car quite often and it spends its days in Florida, a Vintage Air unit keeps things cool while a Retrosound stereo belts out the tunes needed to make the drive even more enjoyable — if that’s possible since he is behind the wheel of a ’68 Camaro.

Details about the engine in the Camaro are not known by Justin, but it has been proven to be a reliable mill, and with the exception of the Sniper EFI unit, is as it was when purchased.

Taking our classic cars for a simple drive around the block is something many of us take for granted. For Justin, it’s something that doesn’t happen as often as he would like, but you can rest assured, he makes the most of the time he does get when he is home.

Do you want to read about more Home-Built Heroes? All you need to do is click here. If you own a Home-Built Hero, we want to hear about it. Since I’ve started the series, I have received more than a few candidates, but I still want to see more — I can never get enough. If you want to see more cars built by you the readers, send a few pictures of your car showing the engine, interior, and exterior, along with all of the pertinent information, and I’ll make you Internet famous. You can send your submissions to [email protected].

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About the author

Randy Bolig

Randy Bolig has been working on cars and has been involved in the hobby ever since he bought his first car when he was only 14 years old. His passion for performance got him noticed by many locals, and he began helping them modify their vehicles.
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