1974 Camaro Z28 Cowl Tag Question

[OldsW30]

I recently acquired a 1974 Camaro Z28 non LT that has the “ - -“ on the cowl tag for the paint code. I am familiar with what that means, but the car also has an assembly date of 07B which from what little I can find may be outside of the normal production date. The car has the original engine block with ViN derivative present on the stamp pad. The assembly date on the engine is 25th of June. The car has a very late serial number (I don’t have it in front of me but it is well over 200000.

I have not been able to really tear into it yet, but the car is currently Hugger Orange, the paint is very old on the car and as of now I have not found any evidence of the car being any other color.

I was hoping the knowledge in this forum might be able to tell me if they have heard of any other ‘74 Camaros being built around the same time or being painted Hugger Orange.

Would anyone be able to help me with some additional information?

[OldsW30]

This should read “ - - “ as in dash dash for the paint code.

[Bill Pritchard]

I've never heard of a Hugger orange factory-painted car after the 1970 model year, but I'm certainly not well versed in that. Could it possibly be the 1973 Camaro color of Medium Orange Metallic, which was paint code 97 in 1973? That would seem more of a possibility than Hugger, and would require a special order since it wasn't available in 1974.

[mssl72]

What Bill said.

You mentioned your paint is older, so sun damage and time could have changed it some.

[OldsW30]

Thank you guys for your insight. Bill I also was leaning to this being a similar color off of another Make or Model due to Hugger Orange not being an option. However there is no chance this was medium orange metallic. I will get some photos uploaded as soon as I figure out how so you can see what I mean.

[Bill Pritchard]

Here's a true story: I bought a Hugger orange Nova brand new in 1970. Only had it 5 months, and sold it to a friend. About 6 months after he bought it, his girlfriend was driving the car and wrecked it. It got fixed, but the damage was such that the whole car had to be repainted. He chose to have it painted a blue color, similar to LeMans blue. So at essentially one year of age, that car was a completely different color than what it left the factory as.

So your Camaro may have been some other non-RPO color originally and then got painted Hugger orange early on in life, too.