Cool Camaro
Tony Povletich’s Camaro is exceedingly rare. It’s one of only 135 1LE-equipped cars built for the 1994 model year, and has a scant 26,000 miles on the odometer. Even more rare: His car was used from day one as a racer. In a time when limited production performance cars are often viewed as garage queens or collection centerpieces, here’s one that has been regularly flogged around the track. The prior owners of this car, Brian and Bea Reggaine, campaigned it to a national championship for Bea at the 2010 SCCA Solo Nationals.
Tony has owned more than his share of cool F-body cars over the years, including a 25th Anniversary Trans Am and a number of earlier cars. “This is definitely one of my favorites,” he reports. “The 1994 25th Anniversary TA I had before this one would be a very close second to it.”
While the newer LS engines get most of today’s glory, the slightly older LT1 can still make plenty of power when built properly. Tony’s LT1 has been upgraded to the more powerful LT4 specs by famed racer/builder Danny Popp and now makes 420 horsepower.
The Cherry Bomb muffler found out back was sourced from a Farm and Fleet. “Don’t laugh,” Tony says, “there’s a long story behind that one, but, hey, it works and puts me at the decibel limit for SCCA!”
The brakes came from a C5 Corvette, while a 3.42:1 final drive and six-speed manual box originally fitted to a 1993 Camaro Z28 have been installed. “It will do about 72 mph in second gear before hitting the rev limiter,” he says, “which is perfect for most autocross courses.”
Potent Pontiac
John and Rhonda Fehring’s 2000 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, on the other hand, is not an ultra-rare 1LE-equipped model. It doesn’t even have the flared nostrils the WS6 Ram Air package would add.
This one started out as a base model, pedestrian Trans Am, but, like Tony’s, it’s been beefed up as well. The Fehrings own a company called Hoosier Performance Engineering. They cater to the track day crowd and offer all sorts of upgrades for late-model GM performance cars like the Corvette as well as the fourth-generation F-body. Their Trans Am serves as a test bed for new products.
Since the Fehrings’ Trans Am is a 2000 model, it came from the factory with the Gen III LSI, but that has since been replaced with a 6.2-liter LS3–proving that not even cars that came with LS engines are immune to LS swaps.
The Trans Am has served as the shop’s own skunkworks test lab for products like their own heavy-duty hubs. These hubs replace the original ball bearings with stronger Timken tapered bearings. The spindle and flange are custom forged units from Strange. “The hub is completely rebuildable, re-packable, and it retains the ABS wheel speed sensor function,” John explains.
The shop also totally re-engineered the suspension, although they followed GM’s lead. “I’m a big believer of separate load paths for shock and spring inputs, like the factory designed,” John explains. “Coil-overs drive all that loading through a single mount, and I feel it negatively impacts vehicle ride quality.” Actually, the car does have coil-over springs at the rear–kind of. “I could not get the desired rear spring rate high enough and still have a spring that wouldn’t fall out at full droop,” he explains, “so I used a small coil-over spring on the shock and a 5-inch Afco spring on the axle mount. So the car has six springs in it.”
Pick a Platform
In SCCA CAM autocross action, these fourth-generation F-bodies face off against newer machines–cars featuring more technology, more stock power and more advanced suspensions. Still, the older cars hold their own. At this spring’s SCCA CAM Invitational, J.J. Mallrich had the top-placing fourth-generation F-body after wheeling his 1999 Camaro Z28 to a fifth-place finish–just about a second and a half behind the winner, 2015 Mustang GT driver Dennis Healy. Now, though, with fourth-generation F-body prices about as low as they can ever possibly go, our two feature cars show the potential for making one of these into a true world-class racing machine.
