1969 Camaro Pace Car Edition

The Story

The Camaro served as the official Indy 500 pace car four times between 1967 and 1993. Probably the most famous and iconic of all Indy pace cars is the 1969 Camaro SS. This car paced the 53rd running of the Indy 500 on May 30, 1969.

This race was Mario Andretti’s first victory at the “Brickyard”. This would be Mario Andretti’s ONLY Indy 500 victory in 29 attempts.

To capitalize on the exposure, Chevrolet built a limited run of Z11 pace car replicas for sale to the public. Though Chevrolet hoped to build one for each of its dealers, approximately 6,400, there were actually only 3,675 pace car replicas built. Each car was painted Dover White with Z28 style stripes done in Hugger Orange with orange hounds tooth upholstery.
 

As part of the SS package, the standard engine was the 300HP/350CI engine with three-speed manual transmission. This car was built with a 396CI L78 engine and 4-speed transmission. There are no records for how many 396CI pace car replicas were built, however estimates range between 15 and 25 percent divided between the automatic and 4-speed transmission making this particular car fairly rare, likely in the range of 1 of 370.