Feature
The First 1969 Camaro Built for Competitive Drifting
Bad on Blacktop
Formal competitive drifting may have gotten its start in Japan, but it's American iron that's dominating competitive drifting in this country. Although the majority of machines competing in the U.S.-based Formula Drift series are still imports, it was a Pontiac GTO, a Dodge Viper and a Ford Mustang that finished one, two, three in this year's championship.
With that kind of success and more competitors realizing that an understressed V8 is cheaper and more reliable than a force-fed four, that domestic presence is only going to grow. And the next hunk of American hardware to go drifting will be this ground-breaking 1969 Chevrolet Camaro.
Built by the father-and-son team of Mike and Brendan Shannon, it'll join the fight next season. But getting the car to this point hasn't been easy. Although few can blaze the baloneys better than a built '69 Camaro, drifting is more than tire smoke, and turning a muscle-bound classic into a sideways slider has never been done before.
"The development has been insane," says Brendan who at 21 co-owns Blacktop Rodeo Racing with his father Mike. "Everyone knows how to turn a [rear-drive] Corolla or a 240SX into a drift car. But no one had ever done it with a '69 Camaro before. So we had to make everything up ourselves."
What they've conjured up could propel drifting beyond the tuner-crazed fringe into the mainstream of American automotive enthusiasm. Putting a burly big-block V8-powered '69 Camaro drift car amidst all those four-cylinder twerps? Come on, that's pure marketing dynamite.
After this, a full-drift '32 Ford Hi-Boy seems inevitable.
Nothing Straightforward, Ever
Brendan, a filmmaker and junior at the University of Southern California, and Mike, an attorney in Pasadena, are car nuts of long-standing obsession. Mike gave Brendan a training course at the Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving in Arizona as a high school graduation gift and it was there he met and befriended instructor Ryan Hampton. Over time that friendship blossomed into a business partnership. They secured financing from the elder Shannon and Blacktop Rodeo was born (the "Rodeo" part acknowledging Mike's career in team roping competition).
Hampton, 31, is a racer of note who won the 1994 SCCA ITB Championship (with eight wins that season), competed in innumerable other road racing series and won a race in the Infiniti Pro Series back in 2002. But drifting, with its relatively modest financial demands and emphasis on driver talent, has been his latest passion. He's been campaigning an S15 Nissan 180SX (Nissan's home market-only successor to the 240SX) for Team Falken Tire in the Formula D series. It was Hampton who, when asked what car Blacktop Rodeo should build, suggested the '69 Camaro.
"We had a vague idea of running a car in the Silver State Challenge," said the elder Shannon, mentioning that Nevada time trial "drifting wasn't originally in the plan." But as time went on, "Brendan got more and more into drifting. Then Ryan wanted to use our car in his career and the plans just came together."
All they needed now was a car…and the equipment to make it competitive in drifting.
New, Old and Sideways
Back in the mid-'60s when GM was designing the Camaro, the last thing the carmaker wanted was to develop a car that would swing its tail out with the slightest provocation. And American cars of that era, with America's arrow-straight highways in mind, had steering built to be stable and predictable rather than very quick and precise. All that would have to change.
The Shannons had had a hot-rod Chevelle built for them by Steve McClenon of Hotrods to Hell and that experience had ultimately left them impressed. Not only was the car fast and beautiful, but well built, too. "Brendan wrecked the Chevelle," explains Mike, "and the roll cage saved his and his girlfriend's lives."
So once they acquired a clean, stock '69 Camaro sport coupe for $10,000 in August 2004, it went to McClenon's Burbank, California, shop. Fortunately, there are a lot hot-rod parts out there for the '69 Camaro. And this one needed most of them.
Engineered to Slide
Once the Camaro was stripped down to a shell, McClenon got to work giving it a completely new set of suspenders. The rear semielliptical leaf springs were replaced by Hotrods to Hell's "Centerdrive" system that uses NASCAR-style "truck arms" which reach forward almost to the center of the car and a Panhard bar to locate the solid rear axle.
Up front, the entire front subframe and suspension were swapped out for a fabricated "Rally & Road Race" system from Martz Chassis that incorporates tubular arms, coil springs, custom-built Tein shocks and rack and pinion steering. In drifting there's no such thing as "too much" steering angle, so McClenon had Woodward Machine engineer a special rack and pinion with an appallingly quick 10.0-to-1 ratio and just as much travel as they could stuff in without having the inside of the P255/40ZR17 Falken tires hit the subframe's rails. The inner fenders are gone and the 10-spoke forged alloy wheels (17-by-8 front and 17-by-10 rear) are built by Circle Wheels to Hotrods to Hell specifications.
With nearly 700 horsepower flowing from its 468-cubic-inch big-block Chevy V8 through a T-10 four-speed manual transmission to a set of 3.73-to-1 gears, Hampton doesn't have to induce oversteer with anything except a tip of throttle. But there's a second set of calipers clamping on the rear 13-inch Wilwood disc brakes that are plumbed to a hand-operated master cylinder mounted just forward of the shifter anyhow — it's a "rally brake" or "bootlegger's brake" depending on your cultural references. The front brakes are also 13-inch Wilwood discs with six-piston calipers.
Stripped of its bumpers, sound insulation, heater and front inner fenders, the Camaro weighs exactly 2,870 pounds. The body is stock except for that steel Cowl Induction-style hood which is needed to clear the high-rising intake manifold.
With the P275/40ZR17 Falken rear tires fitted, all that was left was a lot of tedious trial and error to make it all work together sideways.
Better to Run Than Crawl
At the Bondurant School's track (which recently cancelled its drifting classes since everyone who wanted to attend couldn't afford the tires) in Arizona, the Blacktop Rodeo Camaro starts with a thunderous heave and settles into a raucous, raging idle. With a nearly 13-to-1 compression ratio and aggressive Isky cam, this engine is well beyond what's necessary for competition. But its booming voice is unique in the sport where the few other V8s that compete are smaller and nowhere near as raw.
There's nothing to isolate Hampton or the occasional passenger from the car's primal nature. At low speed the car feels like it wants to rip itself apart in anticipation. It's like a bull in a rodeo chute just after the rider's bucking strap has been pulled tight — just open the damn gate.
The car doesn't move in bursts like a drag racer, but explodes into smoke the moment Hampton hits a corner. Suddenly the engine note evens out, the rear tires fry and the car settles into its comfort zone. That zone is sideways at about 60 mph with a rooster tail of gray-blue smoke stretching back 40 feet and climbing at least that high.
From outside it couldn't look more dramatic. But inside the machine there's an eerie calm as the Camaro does its sideways business seemingly unstressed. It's loud, but unstressed. It's built to go sideways and it wants to go sideways. What is a ton and a half of pent-up frustration at idle becomes a raging but graceful bull when unleashed.
All-American Drifting
After a few preliminary — call them "developmental" — appearances at Formula D events this year, Blacktop Rodeo thinks it finally has its Camaro ready for prime time. Next year we'll find out if an American automotive icon designed when Lyndon Johnson was president can compete in a sport dreamed up by 21st-century Japanese teenagers.
With that kind of success and more competitors realizing that an understressed V8 is cheaper and more reliable than a force-fed four, that domestic presence is only going to grow. And the next hunk of American hardware to go drifting will be this ground-breaking 1969 Chevrolet Camaro.
Built by the father-and-son team of Mike and Brendan Shannon, it'll join the fight next season. But getting the car to this point hasn't been easy. Although few can blaze the baloneys better than a built '69 Camaro, drifting is more than tire smoke, and turning a muscle-bound classic into a sideways slider has never been done before.
"The development has been insane," says Brendan who at 21 co-owns Blacktop Rodeo Racing with his father Mike. "Everyone knows how to turn a [rear-drive] Corolla or a 240SX into a drift car. But no one had ever done it with a '69 Camaro before. So we had to make everything up ourselves."
What they've conjured up could propel drifting beyond the tuner-crazed fringe into the mainstream of American automotive enthusiasm. Putting a burly big-block V8-powered '69 Camaro drift car amidst all those four-cylinder twerps? Come on, that's pure marketing dynamite.
After this, a full-drift '32 Ford Hi-Boy seems inevitable.
Nothing Straightforward, Ever
Brendan, a filmmaker and junior at the University of Southern California, and Mike, an attorney in Pasadena, are car nuts of long-standing obsession. Mike gave Brendan a training course at the Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving in Arizona as a high school graduation gift and it was there he met and befriended instructor Ryan Hampton. Over time that friendship blossomed into a business partnership. They secured financing from the elder Shannon and Blacktop Rodeo was born (the "Rodeo" part acknowledging Mike's career in team roping competition).
Hampton, 31, is a racer of note who won the 1994 SCCA ITB Championship (with eight wins that season), competed in innumerable other road racing series and won a race in the Infiniti Pro Series back in 2002. But drifting, with its relatively modest financial demands and emphasis on driver talent, has been his latest passion. He's been campaigning an S15 Nissan 180SX (Nissan's home market-only successor to the 240SX) for Team Falken Tire in the Formula D series. It was Hampton who, when asked what car Blacktop Rodeo should build, suggested the '69 Camaro.
"We had a vague idea of running a car in the Silver State Challenge," said the elder Shannon, mentioning that Nevada time trial "drifting wasn't originally in the plan." But as time went on, "Brendan got more and more into drifting. Then Ryan wanted to use our car in his career and the plans just came together."
All they needed now was a car…and the equipment to make it competitive in drifting.
New, Old and Sideways
Back in the mid-'60s when GM was designing the Camaro, the last thing the carmaker wanted was to develop a car that would swing its tail out with the slightest provocation. And American cars of that era, with America's arrow-straight highways in mind, had steering built to be stable and predictable rather than very quick and precise. All that would have to change.
The Shannons had had a hot-rod Chevelle built for them by Steve McClenon of Hotrods to Hell and that experience had ultimately left them impressed. Not only was the car fast and beautiful, but well built, too. "Brendan wrecked the Chevelle," explains Mike, "and the roll cage saved his and his girlfriend's lives."
So once they acquired a clean, stock '69 Camaro sport coupe for $10,000 in August 2004, it went to McClenon's Burbank, California, shop. Fortunately, there are a lot hot-rod parts out there for the '69 Camaro. And this one needed most of them.
Engineered to Slide
Once the Camaro was stripped down to a shell, McClenon got to work giving it a completely new set of suspenders. The rear semielliptical leaf springs were replaced by Hotrods to Hell's "Centerdrive" system that uses NASCAR-style "truck arms" which reach forward almost to the center of the car and a Panhard bar to locate the solid rear axle.
Up front, the entire front subframe and suspension were swapped out for a fabricated "Rally & Road Race" system from Martz Chassis that incorporates tubular arms, coil springs, custom-built Tein shocks and rack and pinion steering. In drifting there's no such thing as "too much" steering angle, so McClenon had Woodward Machine engineer a special rack and pinion with an appallingly quick 10.0-to-1 ratio and just as much travel as they could stuff in without having the inside of the P255/40ZR17 Falken tires hit the subframe's rails. The inner fenders are gone and the 10-spoke forged alloy wheels (17-by-8 front and 17-by-10 rear) are built by Circle Wheels to Hotrods to Hell specifications.
With nearly 700 horsepower flowing from its 468-cubic-inch big-block Chevy V8 through a T-10 four-speed manual transmission to a set of 3.73-to-1 gears, Hampton doesn't have to induce oversteer with anything except a tip of throttle. But there's a second set of calipers clamping on the rear 13-inch Wilwood disc brakes that are plumbed to a hand-operated master cylinder mounted just forward of the shifter anyhow — it's a "rally brake" or "bootlegger's brake" depending on your cultural references. The front brakes are also 13-inch Wilwood discs with six-piston calipers.
Stripped of its bumpers, sound insulation, heater and front inner fenders, the Camaro weighs exactly 2,870 pounds. The body is stock except for that steel Cowl Induction-style hood which is needed to clear the high-rising intake manifold.
With the P275/40ZR17 Falken rear tires fitted, all that was left was a lot of tedious trial and error to make it all work together sideways.
Better to Run Than Crawl
At the Bondurant School's track (which recently cancelled its drifting classes since everyone who wanted to attend couldn't afford the tires) in Arizona, the Blacktop Rodeo Camaro starts with a thunderous heave and settles into a raucous, raging idle. With a nearly 13-to-1 compression ratio and aggressive Isky cam, this engine is well beyond what's necessary for competition. But its booming voice is unique in the sport where the few other V8s that compete are smaller and nowhere near as raw.
There's nothing to isolate Hampton or the occasional passenger from the car's primal nature. At low speed the car feels like it wants to rip itself apart in anticipation. It's like a bull in a rodeo chute just after the rider's bucking strap has been pulled tight — just open the damn gate.
The car doesn't move in bursts like a drag racer, but explodes into smoke the moment Hampton hits a corner. Suddenly the engine note evens out, the rear tires fry and the car settles into its comfort zone. That zone is sideways at about 60 mph with a rooster tail of gray-blue smoke stretching back 40 feet and climbing at least that high.
From outside it couldn't look more dramatic. But inside the machine there's an eerie calm as the Camaro does its sideways business seemingly unstressed. It's loud, but unstressed. It's built to go sideways and it wants to go sideways. What is a ton and a half of pent-up frustration at idle becomes a raging but graceful bull when unleashed.
All-American Drifting
After a few preliminary — call them "developmental" — appearances at Formula D events this year, Blacktop Rodeo thinks it finally has its Camaro ready for prime time. Next year we'll find out if an American automotive icon designed when Lyndon Johnson was president can compete in a sport dreamed up by 21st-century Japanese teenagers.
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