Bobby Sanger’s 1969 CAMARO Z28 Dream

Bobby Sanger’s Z28 Dream

First of all my love for cars and hot rods go back to when I was just a couple of years old, that would have been in the early 60’s since I was born in October of 1959. My dad and grandpa owned a full service Amoco filling station and dad would clean up old parts and that was some of the toys that I played with as a youngster.

Now lets talk about my Camaro. My love for the 1969 Camaro started when I was about 13 years old. One Sunday afternoon a guy from our youth group at church came to pick me up to go bowling and he was driving a Maroon 1969 Camaro SS. That was love at first sight and I told myself that one day I would own a 1969 Camaro. Well when I got my first true hot rod it was a one owner 1966 Chevelle SS with the 396 ci 325 hp engine, this was my senior year in high school in 1977. It was an ok car but it wasn’t a Camaro. During the summer of 1978 I came home from work one day and noticed a 1969 Camaro in my neighbors driveway. As I was walking over to look at the car a gentleman about my age came out of the house and we started talking about our cars. He stated that he had always wanted a Chevelle and I told him I had always wanted a 1969 Camaro. He was in town visiting his girlfriend for a few days and we would talk on a daily basis. Finally the night before he was
to return home we worked up a trade and I finally got my dream car that I had wanted for all of those years. For the first few years I just drove the car and repainted it once. Then in 1982 me and a friend decided we were going to do a semi restoration. we replaced all of the body panels except the roof, I rebuilt the 302 engine and we installed new carpet and a head liner. The car always placed and won several trophies at car shows. During this time I wasn’t scared to run the car hard, I actually street raced the car a lot and would take it to the local drag strip and bracket race. Even though the 302 engine was a small displacement engine it sure made a lot of horsepower. Eleven years and a lot of hard miles had taken its toll on the car so I decided to do a complete restoration on the entire car. In 1993 I started disassembling the car and took it to a friends house to media blast the body and under the hood and for the next ten years the car set and
the only thing I had done was rebuilt the engine in my garage at home. I finally decided in 2003 to take the car to a couple of friends shop and we done a complete nut and bolt restoration. Due to time constraints and money the restoration took 4 years and the car was finished in April of 2007. I would like to thank Eddie and Jim Stutler for all of their hard work and without them the car would not look as good as it does. The car has won over one hundred trophies including Best of Show, Best Chevrolet, Best GM, and Best Camaro among other specialty trophies. Having owned the car for almost 37 years it is like a family member to me and I have no intention of ever selling the car. I have turned down very large offers but I want my daughter or grandchildren to enjoy it as much as I have. I still enjoy getting it out and running it hard and I still enjoy doing burnouts when I get the opportunity. So owning this car is like a dream coming true, it has
always been my favorite car and it will always be. I take my 8 track tape player with some Lynyrd Skynyrd playing with me when I cruise and it takes me back to the 70’s and 80’s. It sure was great growing up in that time.

 

CamaroNews, Would like to thank Bobby for sharing this great article, and of course his beautiful passion the 1969 Z28 Original owner Camaro.