1970 Chevrolet Camaro Tour De Force Is Tired of All the Awards, Begs to Be Driven

If you're here reading this now you probably are a sucker for anything that has wheels and travels under its own power. You may like SUVs, hypercars, or plain and cheap daily drivers, but the reality remains this: if you like them, you probably drive them.

The same logic applies to custom cars. I for one go nuts over them, and call me crazy but I will never understand the pleasure some people take in building extraordinary vehicles just to show them off, and not drive them to the fullest extent of their capabilities.

Sure, I get there is a financial component (and an important one, admittedly) in all of this, but let me put the above in some context. Say you have the chance (and money) to get your hands on a Chevrolet Camaro such as this one here. Would you use it and enjoy it for yourself, or tour the country with it on a trailer just to snatch awards and recognition?

To me this is how a Camaro that needs to be driven hard looks like. To the guys who made it, Arizona-based Heath Elmer Restorations, it was probably never more than a show car born to win them awards at countless Goodguys events.

Granted, it was also a Goodguys Autocross participant at some point, but it still kind of feels like it was never driven to the fullest of its abilities.

The 1970 Camaro, which in this heavily modified form wears the name Tour de Force (another cry at being driven, wouldn't you think?), came to our attention because it is one of the many custom rides selling this week in Scottsdale, Arizona, at the hands of auction house Barrett-Jackson.

Just a quick look at the thing will have you convinced this is one of the most impressive builds of this kind that crossed your screen in recent times. A Gunmetal Gray beauty that looks perfectly suited to drive its owner on the drag strip and to the movies with equal efficiency and style.

The body is the perfect representation of a custom Camaro, with just the right amount of black trim, matching tinted glass, and a touch of carbon fiber on the hood, trunk lid, and rear panel filler. Even the door handles, sourced from a Buick, somehow fit perfectly in the design.

The car is not only a looker, but a doer too. That's only natural for a build of this caliber, so the presence of a 427ci engine under the hood does not surprise anyone. Packed to the teeth with impressive gear, including a forged crankshaft, forged pistons, and a sniper fuel injection system, the powerplant has been dyno tested to over 600 horsepower.

The impressive troop is handled by the driver with the help of a Tremec 6-speed manual transmission and screams its presence on the road through a custom three-inch ceramic-coated exhaust system with custom headers and Borla mufflers.

The power of the engine is sent to the rear wheels with the help of a Detroit Speed Engineering 9-inch rear-end packing a Truetrac differential with 3.89 gears. The wheels themselves, all four of them, are of the Rushforth Whiplash variety, coming in at 18 inches and shod in BFGoodrich G-Force Rival tires.

To match the rest of the build the wheels have been imagined in satin black and hide behind them a heck of a suspension system. At the front the Camaro was gifted with Corvette C6 spindles and a sway bar from Detroit Speed Engineering, while the opposite end is supported by a triangulated 4-link system with JRi coilovers. Stopping power comes courtesy of Baer disc brakes.

The interior of the Camaro is simply black and efficient, and it too begs to be used, not admired. Recaro seats in leather have been installed front and rear, with the ones at the front rocking 4-point harnesses. Increasing the safety of the occupants is a full Detroit Speed Engineering full roll cage.

The impressive dashboard has been equipped with Speedhut gauges held in place by specially designed bezels meant to be reminiscent of what you would find on an airplane. The metal seen here expands in the form of billet aluminum trim throughout the interior, and the interior is also gifted with a Momo steering wheel, push-button start, and a console to hold the shifter.

The sound hardware is impressive, to say the least, and it comprises a combination of gear supplied by Pioneer and Rockford Fosgate. We've got two amplifiers, two tweeters, four speakers and no less than three subwoofers.

As said, the car is scheduled to sell at auction as you're reading this, and it will do so with no reserve, meaning there's no way to tell how much it will fetch. We will of course update the story as soon as we learn how much it eventually went for.

Update February 4 - sold for $138,600.