In its debut year, the 1967 Camaro was chosen to pace the 51st running of the Indianapolis 500. All Camaro pace cars carried a white paint scheme along with blue accents including stripes and interior. Three Camaros were specially prepped for pace car duties while only one, #92, saw pace car duties race day. The actual pace cars contained 396-cubic-inch V8s, mated with a M40 Turbo-Hydromantic transmission. Chevrolet delivered to the track the following Norwood built Camaro’s to serve at various activities:
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43 Festival cars - These were the Indy 500 “Festival Committee cars” and were used for any Indy 500 Festival duties such as the down town parade and other associated duties.
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10 Speedway cars - These were in general support of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and were used by speedway staff.
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25 Brass hat cars - these were in general service to Chevrolet Corporate VIP’s
In addition, Chevrolet produced a limited number of dealer replicas. The exact number of dealer replicas are unknown as Chevrolet never released specific build data on the pace car replicas. It is speculated that more than 450 dealer replicas, possibly more, where produced with various engine configurations. Pace car replicas were built at both the Norwood and Van Nuys plants. Another batch of Norwood cars were produced for export to Canada after the race.
Former three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Mauri Rose led the field to the start of the 1967 Indianapolis 500. Fittingly, A.J. Foyt would go on to win his third Indianapolis 500, later being presented with his own pace car replica. After the month of May, festival and official Camaros were sold at dealerships across the country. The Camaro on display is one of the 100 used during May.
Side comments
Two race prepped cars are known and verified, docs state a third car was also built which we’ve never been able to fully document either with a VIN or photos. This statement of two versus three is things legends are made of!
Our registry has 218 cars in it, hard to imagine that we have documented such a high percentage of the cars 50 years later if only a handful of cars, as was speculated, were built