“I’ve put 65,000 miles on this car since I bought it back in 2006,” Chad Ryker (@autoxandtrack) of Elk Grove, California, explains. “It’s been driven from California to Texas, where I ran it at Circuit of the Americas, and to Colorado, where I ran it at Pikes Peak. I brought my newborn daughter home from the hospital in this car. It’s become a little more racy since I moved into a place where I have room for a trailer.”

He says that he initially bought the car simply because he missed having a vintage performance car to wrench on. “This was before pro touring and restomod-style builds were on my radar – I just knew that I wanted a car that had more modern amenities.”

Initially the car was motivated by a ZZ4 350ci crate motor with a Holley Stealth Ram, a six-speed manual gearbox, and a set of disc brakes. “I drove it around like that for a while – I really enjoyed having the fuel injection and the double-overdrive transmission,” Ryker says. “Then in 2009 I did my first track day, and that sent me down the path of redoing all of the suspension. And suddenly I wanted more power, too, and the reliability that came with an LS motor.”

In the time since, the Camaro has scored an LS3-based mill from Mast Motorsports that’s good for about 500hp at the wheels, along with Wilwood disc brakes, a subframe and torque arm setup from TCI engineering and a set of double adjustable coilovers from JRI, and a laundry list of other go-fast goodies.

Ryker’s been putting the hardware to good use since he started competing in the car back in 2015, amassing wins that include an SCCA Solo Nationals championship title in the CAM-T class as well as the GTV class title in the Optima Ultimate Street Car series, and he just snagged the top autocross spot in the Vintage class at LS Fest West 2022, too.

“I don’t have any radical changes planned for the car, but these things are never done,” he admits. “And the competition is getting so fierce within the pro touring muscle car world that you can’t rest and expect to stay competitive. So there’s a few things in the works, and I’ve got some ideas about how to lighten the car a bit more for SCCA competition – right now it’s at 3,200lbs, which is the minimum for Optima, but it’s 200 pounds heavy for SCCA. And maybe some kind of traction control setup. I hear that Dominator system is pretty good!”