They’re disappearing
 

Good pic of the gold 69 Jeff thanks for posting that. My point is these base non performance, non SS, plain Jane, whatever you want to call them Camaros are becoming a thing of the past. I understand exactly what ARC is wanting to do with a base car and that’s fine n dandy with me.
These cars are the bread n butter, the bones of our hobby we all enjoy them and you hardly ever see one out at the cruise in or shows in my area. Last year at the Somernite Cruise In I saw a base 67 Camaro coupe with a small block automatic column shift. I spent a half hour looking at small things that were untouched, understanding things I need to correct on my car.
I know of a 67 and 69 long time family owned base cars around me. I’ll try n get a few pics of them and post them up for everyone to see.

Later

My first Camaro was a 1967, base 327, column shift, powerglide car. I bought it from my supervisor at my first full time job, right out of HS, in 1970. Being we lived in the St Paul area of MN, we deal with snow and he was a ski patrol officer at a ski resort in Lutsen MN, so he ordered it with a positraction axle with the standard 3.08 ratio. It had an AM radio, but I don't recall if it was push button or manual, since as an 18 yr old, I HAD to put a better aftermarket radio in. At only 3.5 yrs old it had 100,000 miles and needed a new exhaust. No teenager was going to replace the single exhaust with original....so it got a dual exhaust and it just HAD to have one of those super cool rear spoilers...right ??!!

That '66 Fairlane GT looks like it's got a lot of potential.

Yes and it appears to be a GT. I like the 66, 67 Fairlanes especially with a R Code 427 in them.

I'd take an untouched base model over a cloned SS/Z28 any day.

Yes, those Camaros seem to be nearly extinct. I remember in high school (1993-1997), there were still a lot of first-gen basic cars in the weekly Auto Trader and Tradin' Times. Going rate for a drivable car was $4-5K. I was poor and had a max of $2500 to work with on my best days. I wasted any money I could make on engineering school at Northwestern. Of course, all those cars had rust or rust repairs in the quarters and fenders by then (unkind Chicago climate), but they were drivable. Still never achieved 69 Camaro ownership 27 years later!

Who remembers the eager anticipation of going to 7-11 early on Thursday morning to get the new issue of Auto Trader??

Speaking for the last two years of my search - I can definitely say these base model cars are incredibly difficult to find in an original state. I've tracked a few ideal cars down but the owners aren't willing to sell and really, who can blame them. I look across multiple sources, multiple times a day, and they seldom come up for sale. When they do, they fall into a few categories:

- Genuinely nice original cars which usually sell quick (very rare - maybe two a year that I've spotted)
- Fluffed cars
- Scary body work from an older resto
- Too many changes from original (colour change, engine swaps, etc)

Unfortunately, because I've been looking for an extended period of time, I'm now at the point where I've seen cars that were nice and original however sold quickly at the start of my search come back up for sale in a totally modified state; think nice original 6 cylinder car with LS/6 speed conversion and ran through the auctions countless times, etc.

To add some numbers to this discussion, speaking for 69 only which is what my search is focused on and is probably the hardest to find a base car of (lots turned into COPO clones, pro-touring builds, or simply used as a daily driver and rotted into the ground/junked/totalled, etc)... If we consider what engine option makes a car a base model (non-SS, non-Z28, non-COPO):

L26: 230ci
L22: 250ci
L14: 307ci
LF7: 327ci
L65: 350ci
LM1: 350ci

In total, there were 186,785 base models produced. Total 69 Camaro production was 243,085. This means ~77% of all 69 Camaros were base models - effectively 3 out of 4 cars. I bet you will not see this reflected in the market today with the flood of near everything being a 'genuine' SS, Z28, etc.

Nevertheless, my search continues. Friends have started calling me a base model connoisseur as they think I might be the only person who has spent this long looking for a base model of any car LOL.

There's an original owner 1968 327 Camaro down the block from me.Nice car with tons of paperwork.He brought the car home the day MLK was shot,and no it's not for sale.

I bought / sold a bunch of cars through the Tradin' Times and I used to look at Autotrader all the time. The cheapest car I ever bought was a '68 Chevelle 300 deluxe, I think I paid $400 for it. Six cylinder power glide 2 door. My buddy still has it he's of course put a small block in there.

Those days are gone because the cars got fixed up or just plain rusted out. I picked up a '69 Nova SS former drag car for about $600, the gas tank was held in by the straps that went over some conduit lol. This was in 1991 and already the car was very rusty. Good times.

The good old Autotrader, was good times buying and selling.