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Watch How This 1966 El Camino With an LS/Hemi Hybrid Engine Rips a Fatty Burnout

The Chevrolet El Camino might not be rare, but it still is an iconic name in American muscle car history. This classic coupe utility muscle car reigned in an era with which not many young people are familiar. Sixty-three years after it was first produced, it’s still a marvel to watch on the drag strip and a head-turner in the streets. On their latest episode of Build Breakdown, Hoonigan featured a rare kind of El Camino.
678 hp 1966 Chevrolet El Camino 9 photos
Photo: YouTube Screenshot/Hoonigan
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Someone once said hard work pays. If you put a lot of sweat, blood, and tears into anything, it’ll pay off (with a lot of patience, of course). For Justin, the owner of a neatly restored El Camino, it took more than hard work to realize his dream.

His 1966 Chevrolet El Camino is all about his grandfather and keeping his memory alive – and it shows. It’s the cleanest, most weird build you’ll ever see on a 60s El Camino.

Under the hood, it packs a 406 cubic-inch LS-based Hemi. It comes with huge custom cylinder heads manufactured by Arias Pistons in Gardena. According to Justin, the cylinder heads were initially built for a 6-liter iron truck. The setup makes 678 hp (687 ps) and 633 lb-ft (858 Nm) of torque.

If you look at it from the outside, it looks like a small block Chevy. The block is made by World Products, and it’s called the Motown II LS, built by a guy called Bill Mitchell, and it’s a hybrid between a small block and an LS,” Justin said.

Underneath it’s a 400 small block (pan, timing cover, water pump, and bell housing), the deck height and head-bolt pattern are LS. Simply put, it has a small block Chevy core with the firing order of an LS (a hybrid LS/Hemi of sorts).

How the hell did you manage to make something so old look so new-old? I am so confused,” Gary asked.

Due to the custom build setup, there are a lot of one-off parts, and for the first time in Hoonigan and Build Breakdown history, a featured car only gets to do one fatty burnout. Catch all that action in the video below.

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About the author: Humphrey Bwayo
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Humphrey is a car enthusiast whose love and passion for automobiles extended into collecting, writing, driving, and working on cars. He got his passion for cars from his Dad, who spent thousands of hours working on his old junky 1970 E20 Toyota Corolla. Years later, he would end up doing the same with a series of lemons he’s owned throughout his adult life.
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