This barn find 1971 Chevrolet Camaro Z27 SS has been hidden away under a thick layer of dust for 18 years in Amarillo, Texas, and it’s now being sold on eBay as part of a deceased estate.
As is always the case with cars like this, all claims in the listing will need to be verified before money changes hands, but it’s not every day that a Z27 SS Camaro pops up for sale and this could be a great find for someone looking for their next (challenging) project car.
Fast Facts: A Barn Find 1971 Camaro Z27 SS
- The Camaro was Chevrolet’s long-running answer to the Ford Mustang, with the second-generation model arriving in 1970. For 1971, the Z27 Super Sport package combined upgraded appearance and chassis equipment with either the L48 350 V8 or optional LS3 396 big block.
- The standard SS engine was the L48 350 V8, rated at 270 bhp gross and 210 bhp net after compression fell to 8.5:1 for 1971. Chevrolet built 114,630 Camaros that year, but only 8,377 were Super Sports, including 6,844 fitted with the 350.
- This Amarillo barn find is described by the seller as a genuine Z27 SS with its original CJD-coded 350 V8, original 4-speed manual transmission, and 10-bolt Positraction rear axle. It’s reportedly been stored for 18 years and is being sold from a deceased estate.
- The Camaro requires a total restoration. An aftermarket sunroof means the roof skin needs replacement, while the lower fenders and quarter panels need repairs. The paint was previously stripped, several interior parts are missing, the seats need reupholstering, and the engine’s running condition is currently unknown.
History Speedrun: The Chevrolet Camaro
The Chevrolet Camaro only really exists because of the Ford Mustang, as much as Chevy guys might hate to admit it. When the Mustang went on sale in 1964 it sold a million cars inside two years, and General Motors, which had actually been studying the feasibility of a sporty compact since before the Ford appeared, suddenly needed one in production – and they needed it fast. Formal approval came in mid-1964, giving Chevrolet two years to develop the car and get it into production, the internal code name was “Panther.”
The second-generation Camaro arrived in February of 1970, it looked completely different to the first-gen model, a new car for a new decade. Image courtesy of General Motors.
The Panther name changed before the public ever saw it. In mid-1966 Chevrolet announced the Camaro to journalists in 14 cities over a telephone hookup promoted as the first press teleconference of its kind, and when the assembled press asked what a Camaro was, Chevrolet told them it was “a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs.”
This was nonsense of course, the word camaro didn’t exist before Chevrolet invented it, but their explanation certainly put Ford on notice.
The Camaro went on sale on September the 29th, 1966, as a 1967 model, built on the new F-body platform it shared with the Pontiac Firebird, and offered everything from mild straight-sixes to small and big block V8s. It didn’t catch the Mustang (Ford built 472,121 Mustangs for the 1967 model year to Chevrolet’s 220,906 Camaros), but it established the nameplate and almost a quarter million sales was nothing to sniff at.
The second-generation Camaro arrived in February of 1970, about five months behind schedule. The delay is often blamed on labor trouble, but the Camaro Research Group knows more about this stuff than anyone, and they explain that the delay was actually due to the complex rear quarter-panel dies, which failed during final tryout at Fisher Body and had to be rebuilt.
The car that eventually emerged from Henry Haga’s Chevrolet studio was longer, lower, and wider than the original, styled with a slight European accent, and offered only as a tin-top coupe. Car Life called the new Z/28 version “merely great.” The redesign turned out to have surprising longevity, the basic shape of it carried Chevrolet through to 1981 and through the worst of the Malaise Era.
The Z27 SS “Super Sport” Package
Z27 was the Regular Production Option code for the Camaro Super Sport, one of the key performance packages in the second-gen lineup. For 1971 it cost $313.90 on top of the $2,848 base V8 coupe and brought the 270 bhp L48 350 V8 with bright engine accents, a dual exhaust, power brakes, hood insulation, a left-hand remote sport mirror, F70-14 white-letter tires on 14 x 7 inch wheels, a black-painted grille, hidden wipers, and SS emblems.
The second-gen Camaro emerged from Henry Haga’s Chevrolet studio was longer, lower, and wider than the original, styled with a slight European accent, and offered only as a tin-top coupe. Image courtesy of General Motors.
Buyers could substitute the LS3 396 big block, rated at 300 bhp and by then actually displacing 402, and the package came with either a 4-speed manual or an automatic.
1971 was the year the muscle car era began winding down in earnest at GM, it was a sad time, but it was unavoidable in many respects. The emissions era was arriving, and in early 1970 GM president Ed Cole announced that the company would lower compression ratios across its engine range for 1971 so its cars could run on lower-octane unleaded fuel.
This was a precursor to the eventual removal of leaded fuel as an option, and the introduction of catalytic converters which don’t survive particularly well when pumped full of the exhaust from a leaded-fuel engine.
The L48 dropped to an 8.5:1 compression ratio as a result, and its 270 bhp gross rating, down from 300 bhp the year before, was accompanied by a 210 bhp SAE net rating – under the new system GM began using the same year. The horsepower wars of the 1960s were over, and 1971 was the last year GM published gross figures at all.
Production numbers fell, perhaps unsurprisingly – Chevrolet built 114,630 Camaros for 1971, but just 8,377 of them were Super Sports, 6,844 with the 350 and 1,533 with the 396. 4-speed cars were relatively uncommon, though not as rare as the SS badge itself – 10,614 Camaros of any description got a manual 4-speed that year.
Despite all of this, the car remained genuinely good, Road & Track magazine included the Camaro SS in its August 1971 list of the world’s 10 best cars. But after 1972, a year in which a 174-day strike at the Norwood plant forced GM to scrap 1,100 unfinished cars and reportedly had executives debating whether to kill the F-body altogether, the SS package was dropped.
The Barn Find Camaro Z27 SS Shown Here
The car shown here is a 1971 Camaro described by the eBay seller as a genuine Z27 SS “Super Sport” with the 270 bhp L48 350 V8. This is an estate sale, the seller is a retired body shop owner of 30 years, and he’s selling the car on behalf of his late best friend’s family – he notes that the car has been in storage for the last 18 years.
According to the listing, the original 350 remains in the car with the engine suffix code CJD, alongside what the seller describes as the original 4-speed and 10-bolt Positraction rear axle, with evidence of a clutch and fork replacement at some point.
The seller seems open about the amount of work required, he describes the car as needing a total restoration, and after looking through the images it’s clear that this is going to take much more than a few weeks in the garage to get it good again.
A previous owner is said to have cut an aftermarket sunroof into the roof, so a new roof skin is needed, though the inner bracing is described as good. The floors, rails, and trunk are reported to carry only minor surface rust, and the lower fenders and quarters will need patch panels.
This barn find 1971 Chevrolet Camaro Z27 SS has been hidden away under a thick layer of dust for 18 years in Amarillo, Texas and it’s now being sold on eBay as part of a deceased estate.
The paint was sanded off at some point ahead of a repaint that never happened. The console, tachometer, and dash pad are missing, the seats need upholstery, and the running condition is unknown.
It’s now being sold as-is with a clean Texas title and no reserve out of Amarillo, Texas, and you can visit the listing here if you’d like to read more about it or place a bid.
Images courtesy of Brockrus + General Motors
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
