Our last challenge here at CC was The Great Vega Hunt – a challenge for one of our intrepid photographers to locate a Vega still running on its original engine. That challenge remains semi-active with a few candidates located over the years (here), (here) and (here), though most likely having an asterisk or two when it comes to a strict application of the rules.
Today we move on to our next phase – an early Gen2 Camaro equipped with factory-style wheel covers.
On my recent CC find, I noted that I found it odd that a 1970 Camaro would be restored with a vinyl roof – something terribly uncool in 2019) but still be sporting aftermarket wheels.
The Chevrolet brochure and advertising for the car showed plenty of them with one of two styles of wheelcover – the cheap style assigned the RPO number of PO1 in Chevrolet’s ordering system . . .
and the ritzy optional PO2 version.
It struck me as I was searching out pictures that those wheelcovers were liberally depicted in period advertising but absolutely not in real life, at least the kind of real life that shows up in Google photo searches.
The 1970-73 Camaro has, it seems, become too cool for wheel covers. Or is it wheelcovers? Pictures online seem to breakdown roughly into halves – half of the cars online have aftermarket wheels of a bazillion varieties.
The other half use Chevrolet stuff. But that Chevrolet stuff is virtually all the various types of alloy/Rally wheel styles that appeared on various Chevy models from the era of muscle.
OK, with a smattering of steelie/poverty cap cars out there for a little spice.
Wheelcovers? In two full pages of search results I found precisely *one* car with the basic PO1 wheel cover – a peanut butter gold car that also sported a black vinyl roof. This, folks, is what most 1970 Camaros probably actually looked like.
For what it’s worth there are scads of photos online of Mustangs of this era with the cheap, awful looking wheelcovers that most of them came with. This was in the third line of photos on my screen.
And despite their popularity among Chevrolet marketing types in 1970, I found exactly zero cars photographed and shared online with the PO2 cover. Admittedly that one looks a little more at home on a Caprice or a fender-skirted Monte Carlo – it actually looks like it might have been cribbed from the Continental Mark III if I might be permitted to speculate. But Lord help the Camaro restorer who tries to put a set on an early second generation Camaro.
Could it be that the unwritten rules among the cool kids of the classic car world ban them in the way that pocket protectors or plaid Bermuda shorts would have been shunned by Camaro owners in 1970? Would a PO2-shod Camaro be ostracized by the club and stripped of its “USA-1” license plate?
But perhaps I am being too harsh on Camaro owners, and stock covered Camaro wheels really are to be found out in the world. So thus is our challenge, CC’ers – find us a stock 1970-73 Camaro with factory style wheelcovers. Post it here in a comment or to the cohort, but also give me an email heads-up (at [email protected]) so that we can be sure to give the car the exposure it deserves.
So you have your orders. Go find those cars!
Gosh, here in Tualatin just finding a 20th century Camaro is hard enough and now you want us to find one with wheel covers!?
I see a number of 1970s and older Chevys in Oregon, but the oldest Camaro I have seen recently is a pair of mid-1980s ones. One trashy and one purdy.
I have a theory that restorers use poverty caps as a substitute for wheel covers when going for numbers matching. Styled wheel covers and white stripe tires on muscle cars became taboos to people, but it really wasn’t that uncommon based on what I’ve seen in old period footage or TV shows, in addition to these brochures.
Too cool for wheel covers? Probably. Case in point, the 1968 Shelby Mustangs by vast majority came factory with 15” steel wheels and 5-spoke “mag” wheel covers. You’d never know today with almost every example wearing 10 spokes.
One of my biggest pet peeves is that term muscle car. Is any Mustang, Camaro, Charger, Barracuda, or whatever with the base engine and automatic a muscle car? No!
Don’t even get me started on those who stuck mags on a Maverick with the base six and called it a muscle car or a LTD with the 428 and called it a muscle car. Give me a break.
I’ll admit my 68 Cougar has mags on it while at the same time having a no ordinary 302-4V and yet I don’t call it a muscle car. The original turbine wheel covers are stored. My 68 289-2V Mustang does happen to sport the wheel covers it came with when sold new.
Reminds me that back in the 1990s my Dad was trying to get “classic car insurance” for his 1967 Mustang. It was bone stock except for the Cragar S/S mags.
They refused to insure it based on the non-stock wheels.
My first car in 1976 was a spitting image of the lead photo. Being from Toronto rust had already taken hold of it. When the vinyl top was removed major rust was discovered underneath it. Reproduction parts for these cars were still way off into the future. Luckily my Uncle owned a body shop that specialized in Corvettes. A good bit of fibreglass was used to rebuild the roof and nobody war the wiser. Still after another year of driving the new paint job was starting to bubble behind the rear wheels. I sold it quickly before it got any worse and broke even on the car.
I suspect that quite a few of the owners of 1970’s Camaro’s with wheelcovers, in the ‘70’s, also had pocket protectors and Bermuda shorts. They don’t seem antithetical to me. But an interesting observation how the surviving Camaro’s and Mustang’s are so different now.
Besides the wheelcovers, I don’t seem to recall any Camaros with those “double stripe” whitewalls. Anybody else?
Interesting that that **is** a brochure photo with the “twin stripe whitewalls,” though the brochure doesn’t mention them. I just looked through a bunch of newspapers ads (tire retailers); you see ’em 1969-72, then they pretty quickly drop out of sight…I have no memory of these on any car, standard equipment or otherwise…
Dang, I just missed the year cut-off. There’s a late 2nd-generation Camaro that lives near me that has dog-dish hubcaps. It’s a daily driver. Google StreetView image is below:
Looks like Google screwed up trying to fuzz out the tag. Oops.
If it were a similar-year Corvette, the restorers would probably have put on whatever it wore when it came out of the factory. But few Gen2 Camaros got restored to that level of originality. Maybe in the future…
My Dad refused to pay for wheel covers when he ordered his 1967 Camaro in Granada Gold (the same color as the very first, preproduction Camaro, VIN 123377NN00001). He also refused to pay for power brakes, though he did get the base 327 V8, power steering, Powerglide, and to help its fragile-looking bumpers, bumper guards. So it came with manual brakes and steel wheels/cheap hub caps. He ordered the front bench seat with fold-down armrest but that was a no-cost option.
I don’t know where that car is now but if it still exists, I’d bet it doesn’t look like the El Strippo that it was when it was built. Maybe an ersatz SS350?
This is what his looked like…minus the red-stripe tires. Didn’t want to pay for those.
PO2 RS from a Bewitched episode
Not at all bad looking, but you wouldn’t see one like that now.
A very classy looking car. I look at that then I look back on the Netflix show “Rust Valley” which is another how to make money restoring cars. Thought I’d see if this one was any different from all the other worthless ones where original cars are bastardized into something else. First episode with a 66 Lincoln convertible and they drive it out with ridiculous looking over sized rims absolutely ruining the classic look of a Lincoln. Dumb as usual and not worth watching any further.
Maybe my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember there being a lot of *factory* alloy wheels until at least the late 70s, maybe the early 80s. There were dog dish hubcaps, full wheel covers, and “road wheels” – known by various names, just fancy stamped steel wheels.
Some of the old brochures showed available alloy wheels, but they must have been expensive options. I don’t recall seeing many “in the wild”.
Well into the 70s, even fancy imported cars, like BMW and Mercedes, came with stamped steel wheels with either center caps or full wheel covers. The first factory alloys I can recall seeing were the “Bundt” wheels on W116 Mercedes, but only the fancy ones, the 280SE still had steelies.
That’s how I remember it too. Even with the pony cars, only the sportiest versions tended to eschew the standard wheel covers. And as you suggest, many of the “road wheels” were merely fancy stamped steel wheels. They usually looked better, though.
It’s funny — I’m hardly a classic car “cool kid” and yet the idea of driving around in an early-70s Camaro with regular wheel covers seems so wrong. Yet unlike a lot of sporty coupes of that era, the Camaro didn’t have such a narrow track that standard tires and wheels looked too inset and puny.
OK JP I believe you, Camaros with steel wheels and covers would have existed though Ive never seen one live in the metal, like the six cylinder versions nobody was going to spend the coin to import the poverty pack we could get that already on local assembly cars in fact thats all we could get.
If I’m not mistaken, I’ve already nabbed one: this ’72 looks like it has the original wheel covers.
Very nice! I should have expected that The Professor would come through. But is this the only one we will find?
Those are 1969 Chevelle wheel covers.
Vinyl roof too!
I recall an article by Paul about a 69 Camaro he found curbside with a six cylinder, in which he speculated that it could be the last of it’s type extant. You could probably do a parallel search for early second gen six cylinder Camaros because they would be the cars (using the plural optimistically!) most likely to have the base hubcaps.
Perhaps there is some peer pressure, but I think most if not all people who like second gen Camaros enough to actually put one in their garage just prefer open wheels in whatever style turns them on, even if hubcaps were prevalent in the 70’s amongst the secretaries and school teachers that drove mild mannered Camaros. Pretty much only nerds like us geek about a Camaro with original hubcaps. Enthusiasts then and now were and are all about the muscle versions.
Personally though, being a nerd, I would be SO excited if I found a hubcapped Camaro driving around!
There is also at least one early Camaro convertible (a ’67, I believe) with a six banger still around. A coworker (since retired) owns it. Never been able to nab pictures of it.
He told me his father purchased it in the mid-70s as it was just an ordinary used car at that point. The family has simply held onto it for whatever reason.
Curbside-in-scale department chiming in again. Gosh, that’s twice today…. 🙂
The AMT annual Camaro kit for 1971 had those PO2 wheelcovers for the stock version, but what kid built his model kit stock? Right. Although they looked like a stylist’s version of a spoked wheel, spokes were so passe in 1971. Every kid knew that. And the annual kit also had a vinyl roof texture and moldings etched into that lovely smooth body – urg!
When AMT retooled the kit in the nineties, they rightly made it a Z28; factory alloys and no vinyl roof.
That’s a great looking model! Nice paint and details. I have that 90’s AMT kit too, I just haven’t built it (yet!). If I had an original 70’s kit, I think I would build it with the hubcaps and vinyl roof!
Back in the early seventies(71-73), I passed a large Chevy dealer every day, and I would drool over the rows of Camaro’s, drreaming of when I would get one. The MAJORITY of those on display had the full wheel covers (PO1,2), followed by the Rallye wheel. The dog dish caps appeared only on the lowest model stripper, which if there were any, they were hidden at the back of the lot…..IIRC, LOL!! 🙂 Alas, I never did get a Camaro!
When my Dad bought his 69 Marauder x100 in the seventies I remember so many people having their mind blown when they’d comment on the wheels and be told they were from the factory.
to see an original car with mags from the factory was a real conversation starter back then.
Yes, awesome Kelsey-Hayes Mag-Stars.
The PO2 wheel covers were also available on Corvettes, though I suspect most of them have also been replaced with Rally wheels. I can’t say I am wild about the PO2’s on a ‘Vette, but I could certainly appreciate someone going against the grain and keeping them.
Thank you. I thought that was the case, and you’ve confirmed it.
If that truly is the case, then there has to fair amount of them sitting around in garages and such.
My “dream” Corvette right there, color, year, wheel choice and all. Wow.
I like those on Corvettes. I believe I’ve seen a few in modern times. Much more common I suspect on Vettes than Camaros today.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen wheelcovers on a Camaro. Even as a kid in the 80’s, since I can remember seeing cars, the vast majority of any Camaro had aftermarket mag wheels or factory mag rims (ie: the aforementioned Z28 rims or the Chevy rally wheel). There’s even the odd time that I’d see Cutlass rally rims on a Camaro, but truthfully, most of the 70-73 Camaros were already gone by the time that I was a kid. I live in Canada, and back then, the aggressive road salt would eat cars alive, and you saw very few Vegas, too. For whatever reason, the first gen Camaros you’d see around here and there still, and the late 70’s/ early 80’s 2nd gens, but that was about it.
The inaccurate representation of the vast majority of the actual produced cars stems from a few things that are Darwinistic in a vehicle sense–1) even niche/ performance cars have an even more desirable set of traits, and 2) peer pressure. Hardly anyone wants to be seen driving a grocery getter version of a performance car, and at a car show, you do start to learn that there is a template, and that real uniqueness is not really a part of it. One only needs to look at the custom hot rods that have the traditional SBC swap and similar customizations.
Part of it may be out of convienience and tried and true credentials, but also (and this is where the peer pressure comes in), few people want to be the guy that has to explain a really esoteric build (unless you’re a great talker and you LOVE conveying a story….the kind of guy that is always sitting in his chair by his car at the car shows). It’s the same reason why people use the same words when they speak……there’s countless other words to describe the same thing, yet we mostly use the tried and true words that people can understand.
The other theory is that the effectiveness of horsepower in engines in the last 10 years or so has really made past engines much, much cheaper to go fast–and reliable–so the reality of keeping something stock (even with a small block V8) in a classic car becomes that much more of a labour of love. If you’ve got a badass car with a badass engine, you want it to look the part. That being said, I do see a few cars with poverty caps around.
When I go to cruise nights I almost always have the most esoteric car there, I can assure you, that description is the opposite of me. I walk the show and get quiet satisfaction if I glance and see people looking at it. I do know exactly who you describe though and in my observation, 9 times out of 10, it’s either A. the guy who rolled in with a brand new Corvette or Hellcat to a show predominately filled with 25+ year old cars. Or B. the guy with the badass engine and the badass paint job and the badass stance and wheels.
I don’t doubt peer pressure is part of it, but I wonder whether it’s contemporary pressure or they’re set in their ways with what was popular when they were in high school. Nobody under 40 today will see a second generation Camaro of any stripe and think “pfft, that’s just grocery getter with those wheels”. To one generation these cars were the ultimate in high performance, to mine we’re acutely aware a V6 Camry would eat the bulk of them at a dragstrip, but still think they are cool old cars regardless.
To your last point, I think that has always been the case, or at least it has through my lifetime. I used to read all the hot rod and car craft magazines of my childhood and speed parts for all the common Chevy/mopar/Ford engine’s had pages and pages dedicated to them. The aftermarket has kept these cars mechanically serviceable with speed parts, not OE equivalent replacement parts. If you blew the engine in your otherwise perfect and cherished 307 base Camaro, would you really be that inclined to repaint it hugger orange with Z28 stripes and torque thrusts just because you replaced the engine with one that was hotter out of convenience? Really I’d say the current sentiment of “LS everything” plays more into that point since there are a lot of supporting additions, especially if EFI is brought with it, but that’s getting into restomod territory which is another leap from this.
Some great points. I should also mention that one of my cars is a 1999 3.8 Mustang, and it’s well modified (tune, ported intakes, cam, heads, 4.10 gears, etc), and I do like the “what?” factor when someone looks in the engine bay to see that it’s something different. Or the “who would do this?” sort of thing. But that being said, it’s now a fairly high mileage car and a high mileage trans, and I’m thinking about doing a Coyote 5.0 swap, just out of the need to replace the engine and drivetrain in the next few years, but also…..I’ve just done everything that I can to it besides turbo or supercharge it, and that’s still spending a ton of money to upgrade old architecture.
I love the ease and simplicity of working on the 3.8, but I kinda need something new to work on too (and aspire to for the next couple of years), ‘ya know? So I’m one of those guys that there’s no real rules; I like some original stuff, but also some custom stuff. I do like that there’s always a few 3.8 based Stangs in the junkyard–so parts are still fairly aplenty–but at some point, even the unwanted base models will be shuttered off the roads and junked. I rarely see Fox based 4 bangers or 3.8’s now in the yards.
Oddly enough, the newest video on Jay Leno’s Garage is from a guy who restored a 1978 Pacer wagon, and he swapped an LS engine in there. Not necessarily out of completely wanting to do it, he’d mentioned that the AMC 304 was shot and finding parts were fairly hard to find. So then it boils down to how regimented and steadfast that you are to keeping it all original……and even he had chosen the AMC rally rims that you’d find on a Javelin, to make it look a bit sportier.
I suspect the main culprit for the dearth of Camaro wheelcovers (and probably of wheelcovers on any car) is much more prosaic: they simply fell off and it’s way too difficult and expensive nowadays to find a replacement.
So, virtually everyone goes with whatever OEM mag-style wheel was used. Oddly, it’s a whole lot easier, cheaper and, in most cases, better looking.
And, it opens up the choice of more tire sizes. It’s getting difficult to find certain sizes that were quite common in the 70s and 80s.
You and Buzz Dog remind me of one very good reason wheelcovers are not popular – radial tires. Radials’ much higher traction can overstress old steel wheels that were designed for bias ply tires, and flexing wheels = flying wheelcovers. I don’t know when radials first showed up on Camaros, but I know that my mother’s 74 Luxury LeMans came shod with bias ply tires. The “Radial Tuned Suspension” was an option that seemed to be on maybe 1/3 of the cars in the lot the way I remember things.
This is a definite problem in the Studebaker community where folks have trouble keeping wheelcovers on their cars in normal driving. Poverty caps or newer wheels by other manufacturers (Ford wheels bolt on nicely) help here. And as you note, some tire sizes are getting hard (or at least expensive) to source.
Excellent point!
My college computer major nerd friend had a ragged Camaro just like this gold one. Black vinyl top, all 4 wheel covers intact, power steering, 3 speed manual with a console, factory A/C…and the base 6 cylinder engine.
It sounded just like Dad’s beater ’56 Chevy when starting up and idling.
He offered to let me drive it several time; I politely demurred.