The Survivor Series from Roadster Shop are stock bodied late-model monsters.

Yes, I want to drive it! Is there another answer when faced with a nose-stripe 1968 Camaro with a chrome-ball shifter and nearly 500 hp? Josh Henning from Roadster Shop (RS), a small factory in Mundelein, Illinois, had left the keys in it and parked beyond sprinting distance for both of us. It was a big sign that I was not in Los Angeles, and this wasn’t a regular Camaro. Far from it.

The car looked original. Not resto-original, but out-of-the-showroom-in-1968 original. The door popped open without a creak or a sag. The courtesy lights and dome light winked on as if a miracle had occurred. Inside, it was the smell that hit me first. That old-car smell provided by factory glue formulas and fabrics that were obsolete 30 to 40 years ago. A quick twist of the key and the LS3 started without drama and settled into a four-string idle. I stepped on the clutch pedal and went right for Reverse without snicking it into First to get the synchros in rotation. It didn’t matter, there was no grinding and no change in the temperament of the idle. I backed up a little to see if I was actually in gear. Amazed, I pushed the clutch to the engagement point and rowed the shifter back out, back in, First, Third, Second, and back into Reverse to see if I could get it to do something harsh. At this point, the guys were staring at me from the across the street. I backed it into traffic.

My job was to drive the car back-and-forth over a bridge for photos and video with a real-world U-turn at each end. Imagine an old car with all the annoying things stripped away. The windows rolled up and down, the heater-fan controls worked, it idled, and didn’t make me smell like fuel, cook or deafen me . As I lapped it for 30 minutes, it behaved like a rental. I gave it a good snort approaching the off-camber left-hander over the last bridge joist to see how it gripped, then threw it into a short throttle-inspired drift with a hard lift to see if it wanted to kill me. It snapped right back in line and let me punch up Second and Third before I remembered I was making a high-profile racket in a small Illinois town. In L.A. it would be a sharp weapon for hunting exotics on the 101.

The Camaro was one of four cars Roadster Shop let me play with over two days. This Camaro, a 1968 Mustang, a 1966 Chevelle, and a 1963 Impala all had the low-profile look with next-level drivetrain and suspension systems. They weren’t just street machines with handling and looks, RS sweated all the details. I was spoiled by LED lighting, stock HVAC sliders that operated hidden Vintage Air components, and Bluetooth looking for my Spotify to thump the hidden-amped Rockford Fosgate. The gauges looked original, but there was an LCD screen for a quick glance set against jeweled analog movement to remind me it was vintage. The cars fostered both the pleasant feelings of nostalgia and the rage of a blip-downshift at 80 mph before pushing the car into a corner.

The beasts are part of what RS calls the Survivor Series. The foundation for a candidate is an original unrestored or quality stock-restored American car from the 1940s to 1970s. A pedigree is not required; in fact, doing this to an original LS6 Chevelle or Z/28 is discouraged. The number of untouched fasteners, the straightness and factory fitment of the body, the texture of the paint, and how and where the car aged—these details all matter. This kind of car is rare, yes, but the finished product is an exercise in aesthetics and engineering requiring le meilleur.

The majority of Survivor Series cars are hand-picked by RS and in stock. There is no rushing or shopping for these; each car needs to take its time to get here. When RS hears about a candidate, it is inspected, purchased, and stored in the climate-controlled Site B, a warehouse full of unrestored muscle-car canvas. If you think you have a car for this, the relationship starts with RS scrutiny. Serendipity happens with the right car, the right customer, and the right situation. It’s not like buying a pile of gold. More money won’t help you.

Once the car is carefully vetted, or selected from Site B, the work begins. Aside from make, model, and year, the customer gets to choose the horsepower range, manual or automatic, and answer questions about interior look and function. The build is a balance of form versus function, so the remainder of the components are going to fit to the choices you’ve made about how the car should look, and the era and style from which it is influenced.

The car is partially disassembled, the underside is stripped and coated to protect it against rust, then reassembled using as many of the stock parts and fasteners as possible. The engine will be late-model with drive-by-wire EFI, power steering, and A/C, but you don’t have to give up that FoMoCo 302 or early Chevy small-block look. The engine technology is hidden away and the illusion complete. Under each Survivor Series car, there is a RS chassis. Wheels, tires, and stance are a function of the style of the car and the choices of the owner, with a limit based on the chassis and the body itself. Each chassis is CAD designed and vehicle-specific with proprietary front and rear suspension geometry. The interiors will be stock-appearing with extensive sound-deadening, new wiring, custom seats with factory upholstery (if desired), and retrofit gauges. Everything will look and feel like you remember, but work like something you’d find in a new car.

The cars are built on a timeline using tested designs and parts with some creative leeway built in for the customer to enjoy the best possible experience. The system is designed to allow cost control and speed of assembly combined with comfort and quality in the ride, reliability, driveability, looks, and all the sights, sounds, and smells without the leaks, NVH, and scary handling of a stock car with 500 hp. For a car like the Camaro, Henning said it best: “It’s everything it was and everything it wasn’t.”

1968 Camaro

The engine is a 525hp iron 6.0L from Texas Speed with a cam and ported heads. It has been dressed with a top-mount, drive-by-wire throttle-body hidden under a stock-appearing air-filter lid and base. To complete the illusion, a set of Billet Specialties adapters hide the coils under stock-looking Z/28 valve covers. The intake is a cast LS single-plane.
Inside, the car had a split bench seat that was swapped for a set of Recaros reupholstered in green vinyl. The console has a new cupholder and green paint as well. The gauges are Dakota Digital RTX with stock-appearing faces and LED backlit bars for oil, water, fuel, and volts. Hidden behind the Rockford Fosgate head unit is a Bluetooth receiver, amp, and a subwoofer in the trunk.
No old cars shift like these cars shift. The combo is a Tremec T56 Magnum six-speed prepped by Bowler Transmissions with a McLeod RXT dual-disc clutch and a Tilton hydraulic master and slave. It will change your mind about your dependence on a clutch fork. The pedal is an engineered billet assembly. There is no left or right movement or heaviness and adjustability to change the ratio and clutch feel.
Under the car is Roadster Shop’s first SPEC chassis for the first-gen Camaro. The idea was to create a chassis that required no cutting but still performs like the car has a perimeter aftermarket chassis with well-engineered suspension geometry and integration without losing the connection to the driver and vehicle body. It is further enhanced with double-adjustable coilover and front sway-bar options. The wheels are Forgeline RS-OE1 18×9 and 18×10 with 255/30ZR18 and 275/35ZR18 tires.

The Camaro is the first car to follow the template and style of the Survivor Series. Roadster Shop calls it “zero zero zero zero one.” It was found at the Indy Good Guys Show five years ago in the condition you see it here, minus a three-speed and a six. At the time, it was something that was overlooked and not overpriced. This was the third attempt to buy a car worthy of becoming the first Series car. It was a lesson in shopping for a survivor instead of waiting for one to be delivered by the universe.

1968 Mustang

Look once and you will see a Ford small-block. Look again and you will see a 430hp Chevrolet Performance LS3 crate engine with a hollow distributor, Ford small-block valve covers, and a factory black air-filter lid and base modified to fit around the drive-by-wire throttle-body and base. Take it to a Ford show and it should fool some of the lookers all of the time and all of the lookers some of the time.
Inside, it’s a 2+2 interior with TMI seat bolsters to add a little more comfort. There is a Classic Audio head unit with Bluetooth and trick white LED courtesy lights in the foot well. The HVAC is connected to Vintage Air behind the scenes, leaving the heater and A/C controls working and looking stock.
The difference between the Mustang and Camaro is the track width. The Mustang is narrower, allowing you to use an off-the-shelf wheel instead of a custom wheel required to fit wider tracks. The Mustang has 15×8 Vintage Engineering Magnesium Five Spokes with Coker Wide Oval F70-15 Firestones.

The Mustang is the standout of the Survivors. It holds the first SPEC chassis for Mustang that can be bolted to the body without cutting anything. The car had a quality decade-old stock restoration with a 289 and a four-speed. It was in George Poteet’s car collection as a stock driver.

1963 Impala

For stick-shift cars, the 480hp LS3 is used instead of the 430. The theme of this car is 327 and four-speed using the same late-model technology as the Camaro. It uses the same Bowler six-speed transmission as well.
Keeping with the theme, the Impala has a RS chassis, but because it is an X-frame, it uses the Fast Track version. The 19×9.5 and 20×12 Forgeline RS6 with Sahara Gold center wheels were custom-engineered by the owner through RS. He also picked the wheel centersection and 275 and 335 redline tires. This is an example of the design freedom of the Survivor Series. Wheels, tires, and stance are married to the chassis, but there are choices available.
The seats in the Impala are custom with factory colors wrapped in leather. The gauges are from Dakota Digital. Little touches include moving the shift plate to the left and adding a power-window switch panel hidden at your fingertips.

The Impala is a more recent restoration. The owner has countless super-high-end cars with low mileage and wanted something new and different. He finally went back to his high-school days and bought the car he had then. RS steered him toward a Survivor Series build to get the car to handle like the one in his dreams, not the car he actually owned.

1966 Chevelle Malibu

To properly abuse the local Ferrari-owning cognoscenti, a 750hp LSX was dressed to look like a big-block and parked in front of a six-speed Tremec.
To fit the monster 345 Dunlops under the stock body, the Fast Track chassis was used with custom three-piece RS-OE1 wheels built for RS by Forgeline. They are 18×9.5 and 19×12 built to look stock with period-correct, dog-dish hubcaps.
Inside is the same treatment with Dakota Digital gauges, a stock console with a machined bezel, and six-speed shifter. It looks and feels like a rowdy big-block Chevelle with a great deal more manners.

You don’t see a lot of stock black Chevelles, and we guessed rightly that this one was a recent high-end stock restoration. The owner found the car for this purpose, and it passed the test. It’s now a pure sports-car hunter with a taste for Italian.

SPEC and Fast Track Chassis

The SPEC chassis are pre-engineered using a multi-axis laser to contour 0.125-wall rectangular tubing to fit your car, usually without cutting or altering the factory body. Unlike a mandrel-bent tube, you have more flexibility to move the chassis mounting points without stretching or thinning the metal. The Fast Track Chassis will take up to 100 hours to build; it’s more of a piece of engineered art. They are handmade, requiring a lot of talent to go into the fabrication and finish. They are custom-built to each car with no limitation on the shape of the frame or number of options. All chassis are engineered to the same standard. The price points between the two depend on the manufacturing technique and components and options, rather than compromising engineering quality and ride for a lower price.