Memorial Maro

RIDES and WCC Build Daytona 500 champion jimmie johnson an 800hp tribute muscle car.

Story brian scotto /// Photography zach cordner & george waldman

A tattoo, a mural, a song, a t-shirt— it doesn’t matter how—heads will forever need to pay respect to friends lost. And if you’re a piston-head like NASCAR star Jimmie Johnson, then maybe a muscle car would make the best monument to a partner passed.

LOS ANGELAS 12/15/05
“In October of ‘04, one of our Hendrick [Motorsports] airplanes went down and it had 10 very close friends on it,” Jimmie explains. “One of the gentlemen on the plane was Randy Dorton, the head of our engine shop.” Today, Jimmie is walking around a shelled ’67 Camaro that, in its disheveled state, could be mistaken for a parts car as it sits in the middle of the West Coast Customs garage. “It’s hard to look at it because the car looks like a bomber right now, you know,” jokes Jimmie. But this bomber, in four weeks, will be the rolling memorial that he has been longing for. “I’m building a car in memory of everybody on that plane, including Randy,” says the Daytona 500 winner. “So it’s a special thing. It’s hittin’ something inside that feels good, to know I’ve got Randy’s engine.”Jimmie won the heart of this project ‘Maro on eBay—an engine assembled in memory of the legendary engine builder by the shop he left behind. “When it hit the site I just couldn’t see anyone else owning it outside the Hendrick family,”
he says through his signature good-boy smile. “So, I threw a massive maximum bid on it in my wife’s username so that people wouldn’t know it was me.” Forty-five stacks later, the engine was his. But this is no average V8, this is a NASCAR-spec, 10,000 rpm power plant—the same you would find in both Jimmie and teammate Jeff Gordon’s Chevy race cars. The only question was, what to do with it? Enter the illest car magazine ever to save the day.

On NASCAR.com, Jimmie stated in an intervew that he would love to build a
muscle car. So it was a no-brainer for RIDES to team up with the powers-that-be to power a ’67 Camaro with NASCAR-go to celebrate the marque’s 40th anniversary and ’07 reincarnation at the Detroit Auto Show.

Shoehorning this race-motor into a ’67, and restoring it to boot, would prove to be difficult. Luckily, Ryan Friedlinghaus and the boys at WCC are no longer pimping cars with 4-speed juicers and fish tanks in the trunk, and found some time for the challenge. “It’s gonna be a lot of 24-hour nights, but we are used to that from Pimp My Ride,” laughs Ryan. “Granted, this
car is a lot more special to us.”

“If you’re going to have an old hot rod you need to go back to that era to capture the feel of it,” Jimmie says of his need to keep the Camaro simple. “I like that older feel, it kinda takes you back to what it was like in the ’60s and ’70s, when this thing was on the road.” Jimmie sits with Ryan and the WCC team and a plan is formed. Over the next couple of weeks it’s gonna go something like this; one candy coat of House of Kolors Brandywine, a color-coded interior of suede and leather to retain the classic feel, the proper stance by Eibach, some Sony bang to make ya ears rang (c’mon, NASCAR guys listen to more than just country.) And a lil’ restoration. Okay, a lot of restoration. You see, when working on a throwback there is more to a build than just some music and lick; WCC will have to take the ’67 down to the bare metal, fix any rust and even replace some panels and parts.

“You don’t just slap Bondo on it like we on Pimp My Ride,” snickers Ryan. Fortunately, Year One now makes almost anything you would need for a Camaro resto. But the most difficult job of all
will be to fit the motor. Good thing Smith Race Craft’s subframe, that replaces everything from the firewall forward
chassis-wise, will make it plug-and-play, or so they all hope.

DETROIT 01/20/06
Amazingly, a month later the ‘Maro is looking done. Yes, the engine management still has to be sorted back at Hendrick’s Charlotte, NC headquarters, but this beauty sitting on Pirelli-wapped Asanti 20-inch 131s rims is ready to be unveiled at its grand Detroit debut.

Hundreds gather around jolly Jimmie and skinny ol’ Al Roker as the purple satin is pulled back for all to see, live on the Today Show. Jimmie looks awed, “To be quite honest, I’m shocked [WCC] nailed it like they did,” says a now-ecstatic Jimmie. “I flipped through some photos, looked at some rims, said ‘I like this, I like that’. I really didn’t specify to a T what I wanted. I left it in Ryan and [RIDES]’s hands and pow, here we are with a beautiful car.”

As great as the ‘Maro looks, the real test will be when Jimmie opens it up for the first time. “If you have a muscle engine you gotta do something with it,” brags the muscle newbie. “So I’m going to do some burnouts, have some fun with it. One good thing is I’m able to get on the racetrack and get the fast speed and all the crazy stuff out of my system, so I’m relatively reserved on the street. But I look forward to pulling up to a stop sign with some guy who thinks he’s got some horsepower under the hood, and blowing his doors off.” That will surely make Randy proud, like the time Jimmie grenaded a motor after his win at Fontana… but we won’t get into that!

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