This isn’t your average shop car. ‘Blackout’, Rick Maharaj’s award-winning ‘69 Camaro convertible, is not only a calling card for his Brentwood, California-based Maharaj Customs, it’s also a tribute to his late father, who brought his family to the U.S. to pursue his dream of turning wrenches on American muscle cars.

Maharaj’s parents were fourth-generation Indians from Fiji, in the South Pacific. “It’s a very simple life in the islands,” he explains. “You’re a postman, a carpenter, a clerk at the store, a mechanic, and that’s all you need to be. People are happy. You live in a village, and no one cares what you wear or drive. But my father had other aspirations. He wanted to be a mechanical engineer, but he wanted to do it in the U.S., so they migrated to San Francisco in 1965. He started working as a baggage handler at San Francisco International Airport but he started moonlighting repairing cars in his garage on the side of his house.

“For some reason, he’d get a lot of Chevys… Camaros, Chevelles, Novas, Impalas, Malibus, you name it. And I was his right-hand man at that time: the young assistant handing him tools, changing oil, pumping brakes, and so I got really ingrained in the whole business of cars. As a teenager, I got to fixing them too.

“One of the cars I remember well from when I was a kid was a blue ‘69 SS/RS Camaro that he had. My Blackout Camaro, although it’s a convertible, is a throwback to those days. I debuted it in 2022. He had passed away a year before I started the project and it is a memorial to his life. He and I were supposed to take it to shows like Hot August Nights in Reno, but unfortunately he didn’t make it.”

Blackout is well named, being finished in PPG Envirobase ‘Ultra Triple Black’ water-based paint. Says Maharaj, “We put about four coats of clear on the car. Everybody talks about how deep the black is. It feels like you can put your hand through it!”

The donor car was black, too, with white rally stripes, but quite different to how the Camaro now looks, rides, and drives. Bought in late-2020 from a broker acting for owners in Indianapolis, the Camaro arrived in San Francisco as a “typical restomod”, featuring an LS1, a houndstooth interior, chrome trim, and mag wheels. Crucially, the body was rust-free, and Maharaj Customs – which produces between three and five, high-quality builds a year – set to work with their build team, stripping down and sandblasting the whole car.

Chassis, powertrain, Holley Dominator tuning tricks

Beneath the bead-rolled hood, as part of a complete chassis and drivetrain renewal, the existing motor was swapped for a blueprinted, supercharged LS1. A Flowmaster Delta Force Performance short intake feeds the Edelbrock supercharger. Via a Tremec six-speed transmission with a 3.71 final drive ratio and Ford 9-inch rear end, the motor makes 640-horsepower at the road. Comments Maharaj, “It could do more, but we kept it conservative. Even so, it’s too much power for a convertible really, the car is pretty light.”

As with most Maharaj Customs builds, the powertrain is managed by a Holley Dominator ECU, and the motor runs Dominator EFI. “You can do so much with the Dominator,” he enthuses, “you can tweak and tune just about anything. Here, all of the fuel and air management is done through the Holley setup, and we also use the transmission sensors.

Shop Holley EFI Dominator ECUs here.

“We do a lot of builds using twin-intake motors – twin-turbos or just twin-intake – and when you have to manage multiple throttle bodies, Dominator is the only one that can do it well,” he continues. “We typically use Dominator for anything that’s force-induction that has dual throttle bodies associated with it. Plus, it has so many inputs and outputs that it can control just about anything we want.”

Meanwhile, the reworked chassis has a Fat Man fabricated, Mustang II front clip and a custom, four-link rear. Adjustable, Ridetech ShockWave integrated air springs and shocks are fitted front and rear, working in concert with the AccuAir air-ride management system.

In the spec shown here, Wilwood, 14-inch disc brakes (six-piston on the front, four-piston at the rear) sit within massive rims that were custom made for the project by Intro Wheels. These have since been replaced by an eye-catching new set from Kompression Wheels. The sizing is wild – 22x15 at the back, 21x9.5 up front – all wrapped in Pirelli Scorpion 335/25-22s (rear) and 285/30 21s (front).

“The whole suspension is made for stance and performance,” says Maharaj. “When we go to a show, we normally lower the car, and people love the stance. When the car fires up, it gets up into position two, and we can take off and race around.”

Building – and rebuilding Blackout

Maharaj describes his principles of design as, “stance, speed, and sound. I always try to incorporate all three of these things in any of our builds. I look for cars with certain lines. I love Camaros, but the lines of the ’67 and ’68, I believe, are not as distinguished as the ‘69’s. I always want to accentuate the lines when I draw out a design and create that low, wide stance.”

Blackout has been lowered in two ways: by the air-ride system that slams the body to the ground, and by chopping ¾-inch from the windshield and A-pillars. “Fesler makes flush-mounted glass for the coupe, but nobody makes a flush-mounted windshield for this car,” he reports, “so we designed our own glass to fit, and had it shaped by one of our trusted collaborators, Prestige Auto Body in Stockton, California. We have the wireframe for that window, so if we do have to recreate it, we can. But if I get a chip or crack in that windshield, I’m not going to be happy! I don’t drive the car on the freeway.” A second major body modification are the sculpted vents positioned directly in front of the rear wheelwells.

Following its 2022 reveal, the Camaro was shown for about eight months, before Maharaj decided to take the body modifications a stage further: “I kept thinking that we needed to do more to accentuate the lines, so we extended the body lines on the front and the back of the car with diffusers, and added side skirts, all fabricated in steel by Nickells Customs in Lodi, California. We drew a line from the back corner of the rear diffuser all the way to the front spoiler, to create that nice, sleek line. That works with the famous ‘69 line that runs the length of the car and creates the shadow along the side.

“If you look at the car from the front, you see the meat of the tire right by the side skirt, just hanging out. People call it ‘wide hips on a Camaro’, and that’s exactly what it looks like. They also comment that it looks like a modern Camaro. It looks completely different to anything else, but it still has the ‘69 look, accentuated by the body modifications. That’s exactly what we were after.”

The Camaro’s hips were widened by about a half inch each side, partly to help accommodate the 15-inch-wide wheels. Maharaj Customs completes much of its design and 3D fabrication in-house, with support from his build team spanning SoCal, the California Central Valley, Nevada, and Texas.

On Blackout, the skirts incorporate trapezoidal exhaust exits on each side, creating a sonic feast for the occupants on fire-up, according to Maharaj. Behind the skirts, the exhaust system comprises custom-bent tubes and aggressive, Flowmaster Super 10 Series, single-chamber mufflers.

Inside Move - Next-Level Interior Mods

Maharaj describes his principles of design as, “stance, speed, and sound. I always try to incorporate all three of these things in any of our builds. I look for cars with certain lines. I love Camaros, but the lines of the ’67 and ’68, I believe, are not as distinguished as the ‘69’s. I always want to accentuate the lines when I draw out a design and create that low, wide stance.”

The reprofiled Blackout was back out for a few shows in 2023 before returning to the workshop in early-2024 for a new interior. The modernized dash now features Dakota Digital gauges in addition to the Ididit wireless ignition. There are custom door panels and an interior lighting setup, as well as new seats designed and built by Zamz Audio in Visalia, CA. A Stinger Audio screen controls a PowerBass audio system that more than fulfils the ‘sound’ component of Maharaj’s design principles.

Three, 10-inch, PowerBass 3XL subwoofers are ported through the rear seat. In addition, there are 12 mid-range speakers and horns throughout the car, as well as the amplifiers and processor. Blackout subsequently starred in the PowerBass booth at the 2024 SEMA Show.

The audio build was completed by regular partner, Zamz Audio. Note that for soundproofing purposes, the car was Line-X’d before the installation. Says Maharaj, “there’s zero rattles in any of the cars we build because we spend the time to ensure that everything is sealed and insulated – inside and out.

“We spent a lot of time engineering this car for sound,” he continues. “Convertibles are extremely hard to get good audio in, because the sound goes everywhere, but I think we did a good job. A related challenge, one of the biggest on the car, was: how do package all the components so the convertible top can sit how it’s supposed to, in a car that low, that wide, with a massive audio system and air ride? We had to reverse-engineer the convertible top and build our own arms so that we could lay it down as low as it is now.”

The rear packaging is tight: there is only about 10 inches of space between the large, custom wheel wells in the center of the car.

There were detail updates to the exterior at this time, too. Fully programmable, new taillights with a Lamborghini-inspired Y-pattern were custom made by 396maro Creations. Further forward, Ring Brothers side-view mirrors give off Ferrari Testarossa vibes.

Return to the podium

With the new interior complete, Blackout returned to the show circuit in earnest. The Camaro won awards for Full Custom Convertible, Outstanding Interior – Custom, and Outstanding Individual Display at the 2024 Sacramento Autorama. In 2025 it made a return visit to the Grand National Roadster Show, finishing second in Radical Custom Convertible 1960-69. At the same show, Maharaj’s 1961 Impala took first place in Semi Hardtop/Sedan 1960-64.

“I think we’re done with it now,” he laughs, when asked whether he has any further modifications in the pipeline. “We were thinking about putting an LT4 in it, maybe an LT5, but it’s just way too much horsepower for a convertible. The car gets a ton of attention as it is, lots of oohs and aahs. We took it back to Grand Nationals last year because it was the first time we were showing it with the new rims that we had had custom made. People were still all over the car, which I was happy to see. Folks love a good ’69 Camaro when it’s laid out like that.

“But it is a shop car. It’s there to show off our work, a way to do some extreme stuff and showcase what we can design and produce. Not all customers want it that extreme, but they’ll pick off individual cues and say, I want custom headlights, or taillights, body modifications, or custom interior accents. It’s like going to an auto show and seeing a concept car – you’ll never buy that car, but those features may end up on the real car after the show.”