For several decades, the Chevrolet Camaro has served as General Motors’ answer to the Ford Mustang. The Camaro is slated to bow out of production this year to eventually be possibly replaced by something else, but nobody really knows. Even long after the Camaro has maybe moved onto something else, tuners will be souping these cars up for years to come. The fourth generation of the Camaro saw tuners really cranking up power and one of them was GMMG, Inc. Matt Murphy wanted to turn fourth-generation Camaros into supercars. One of them was the 2002 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Supercar Phase III, a car that lives up to its name with a 7.0-liter LS6 V8 firing 600 HP and 575 lb-ft of torque. Anywhere between just 31 to 39 of these ultimate Camaros exist.
For decades, car nuts in search of ever more power have turned the darlings of American pony cars and muscle cars and have turned them into monsters that could strike fear into even the hardest thrill-seekers. There are countless examples out there, but today we’ll be focusing on the Chevrolet Camaro, General Motors’ answer to the Ford Mustang since 1966.
The Camaro itself is an icon deeply ingrained in American car culture, and it didn’t take long for tuners to turn the pony car into much more. Perhaps the most famous example was Don Yenko, a former racer and the owner of a Chevrolet dealership just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yenko ran a performance shop out of the family dealer since 1957 and when the Camaro made its debut, there was little delay in Yenko hopping up the SS 396 versions of the pony car with 427 cubic inch V8s from the Corvette.
Eventually, the demand for 427-equipped Camaros outstripped Yenko’s ability to create them. So, Yenko reached out to GM for potential help.
But there was a problem because, during this time, GM restricted how large engines could get in cars like the Camaro. As Chevrolet notes, that didn’t stop legends like Vince Piggins from developing high-performance parts under the radar. Around the same time, Illinois dealer Fred Gibbs also saw the potential in allowing the Camaro to be powered by larger engines than the 396 V8 Chevy offered at the time. But how were these guys going to larger V8s?
Pete Estes and Piggins realized they could leverage the Central Office Production Order (COPO) system, normally used for creating special cars for fleets. A Camaro could be fitted with a 427 through the COPO system, circumventing GM’s displacement limitation. This opened the door for Gibbs, Yenko, and others in the know to get what they wanted. It was through the COPO system that Gibbs was able to create the Camaro ZL1, using a 427 cubic inch V8 meant for Can-Am racing, not for street cars.
This COPO system, which remains famous today, will be important for this story later. Matt Murphy followed in the footsteps of Gibbs and Yenko when he decided to make his style of COPO Camaro supercars (above).
The Heartbeat Of America
In 1964, Ford captivated the hearts of many Americans with the release of the Ford Mustang. The pony car was an instant hit, with 22,000 people lining up to buy a Mustang on its very first day of sales. Ford’s Big Three competitors had nothing quite like Blue Oval’s stallion. Sure, Chevy had the wonderful Corvair, but a Corvair isn’t a pony car. The General sent its designers and engineers to work and the Chevy Camaro went into production in 1966.
This story begins in the mid-1980s. The third-generation Camaro is in production and as Motor Trend writes, it wasn’t clear where the next generation was going to go. General Motors was pushing to downsize all of its passenger cars onto front-wheel-drive platforms, which would have spelled bad news for the pony car. As the publication writes, Ford toyed with the idea of making the Mustang a front-wheel-drive car, but corrected course and kept its pony car true to form. What was supposed to be the new Mustang became the Probe.
Well, just like Ford, General Motors began developing a front-wheel-drive platform that the Camaro would move to. GM first considered taking the F-body Camaro and Pontiac Firebird to a front-wheel-drive platform in the 1970s, but that plan fizzled out. But in the cost-conscious 1980s, GM figured moving these cars to a front-wheel-drive platform would reduce costs while also allowing for a smaller, more advanced body. GM even considered making these front-wheel-drive pony cars have steel frames, plastic bodies, and possibly the option for all-wheel-drive.
This new platform was to be called GM80, and perhaps the most startling revelation was the fact that the cars on the platform wouldn’t even have the option for a V8 engine. Instead, GM80 cars would come with the Quad 4 or at their spiciest, a 3.4-liter V6. Reportedly, the belief was that a GM80-platform car would be so light that they would go like they had V8s, anyway.
Unfortunately, or perhaps thankfully, the GM80 project was a dead end. GM’s engineers couldn’t get the GM80’s weight down, the plastic panels were too heavy, the drivelines were reportedly too weak, and worse, the GM80 platform couldn’t pass crash tests. GM expected to sell 350,000 GM80 cars a year, but development costs were so out of control that CEO Roger Smith pumped the brakes and canceled the project. It’s estimated that if GM followed through, the program would have burned a billion of GM’s money.
So, just like Ford, GM learned that replacing its pony car with a smaller front-wheel-drive car wasn’t going to work. Unlike Ford, GM didn’t even get a consolation prize out of the development program.
Still, GM still wanted to release a new generation of pony car for the 1993 model year, so engineers took to updating the F-body for another generation. Despite this, engineers still punched out solid improvements, including rack and pinion steering plus a refined torque-arm rear suspension and double-wishbone short-long arm suspension up front.
One of the upgrades brought over from the GM80’s development was sheet molded compound (SMC) panels. The fourth-generation Camaro and Firebird would get doors, fenders, hatch, and roof made out of SMC. This material was a glass fiber substrate and encapsulated in a thermoset epoxy resin and formed under pressure. Reaction injection molded composites were used to give the fourth-generation cars their sharp noses.
Once again, GM brought firepower to the table. One of the best factory fourth-gen Camaros was the Camaro SS, which took the 5.7-liter LS1 V8 from the Corvette and detuned it to 320 HP. It’s rumored that the detuning was really in the brochure only. Still, for some an abundance of over 300 horses wasn’t enough.
Turning The Camaro Into A Supercar
As journalist Matt Avery reports in a presentation, Matt Murphy grew up cars as his father was a Chevrolet zone representative in the Atlanta area. As Murphy grew up, he gained a fondness for the Camaro. In the 1990s, Murphy joined Street Legal Performance (SLP), a famous tuner of GM products.
SLP used the fourth-generation Camaro for testing and prototyping its own parts. The company created a SEMA show car to demonstrate what SLP could do as well as to preview the Camaro SS. Once SLP was done with the car, it decided to sell it, and Murphy was the buyer. According to the Western Michigan Camaro Club, Murphy became acquainted with WMCC President Doug Warren in the 1980s, finally meeting Warren in 1996. Warren purchased an SLP-tuned Camaro Z/28 SS and had it delivered by Berger Chevrolet in Michigan. Murphy and Warren would become close enough friends that when Murphy had his SLP 1997 Camaro SS LT4 delivered to him, it was delivered through Berger, even though the car wasn’t sold through the dealership. At the time, Berger was known as the only “Super Car Dealer” that rolled tuned GM muscle cars off of its floor.
Berger rolled out the red carpet for Murphy and WMCC showed up to celebrate the occasion, too. Then came Julie and Denny Barker, who bought a 1999 Camaro SS from Berger. Denny Barker realized that Berger’s 75th anniversary was coming up and thought the dealer should make a special car to celebrate it. Barker then met the Camaro assistant brand manager Scott Settlemire, who agreed that Berger should make a special Camaro for its anniversary. However, Matt Berger decided that this car had to be better than just some stickers and it needed more power. Who would give this car more power? The fella named Matt Murphy he delivered the SLP car to before.
This launched a relationship between Murphy and Berger where the former would soup up Camaros and the latter would serve as an outlet to sell them. GMMG, Inc. was launched in Marietta, Georgia in 1999 to facilitate this. Part of the beauty of what GMMG would do meant that buyers got a vehicle that was emissions-certified, still had a factory warranty, and could be serviced at a dealership.
Murphy would go on to create the Camaro Berger SS, the Hot Rod Magazine Camaro, the Camaro Intimidator SS, the Tom Henry Racing Camaro, the 35th Anniversary Performance Edition, and the Black Bird WS6. By November 2002, the WMCC reported that Murphy produced 460 cars, making a GMMG build rare anywhere. It’s also notable that the Intimidator was developed with input from Dale Earnhardt, but sadly, Earnhardt wouldn’t live to see Murphy’s creation hit the road. GMMG was also famous for its chambered exhaust, which many enthusiasts felt was far above more established names like Borla and Magnaflow.
Murphy wasn’t done yet, and in 2002, word circulated that he was working on a supercar, codenamed ZL1.
When Fast Just Isn’t Fast Enough
I could talk about all of those builds, and maybe one day I should because they all show Murphy’s talent for creating some of the best fourth-generation Camaros on the road. However, that might require enough words to crash this website. So, let’s focus on one of the grails from the mind of Matt Murphy.
As Avery explains, General Motors didn’t make a Camaro ZL1 in the fourth generation, so this allowed Murphy to use the name for his own builds. Allegedly, Chevy still didn’t like the usage of ZL1, so GMMG distanced itself further by naming his new creation the “ZL1 Supercar.” The reason for the naming was that he wanted this new build to harken back to the Gibbs Camaro ZL1 and those COPO cars from 1969.
To create the ZL1 Supercar, GMMG sourced 69 B4C Camaros from GM’s COPO system and got to work. These B4C cars were Camaro Z/28s with a 5.7-liter LS1 but stripped down of features and without T-tops. The B4C was often ordered as a police pursuit special, but they would become something else here. As Murphy explained, his cars cranked up the power, but he went through the work to re-certify their emissions. And since GMMG had a relationship with GM, Murphy worked on GM crate engines rather than using aftermarket parts.
In a nod to the past, ZL1 Supercars came in phases. Phase I and Phase II ZL1 Supercars came with a 5.7-liter LS6 V8. Phase I cars saw that engine tuned to 400 HP while Phase IIs got that engine in 475 HP flavor. Here are all of the bits GMMG said you got with a ZL1 Supercar:
- LS6 V-8 Engine
- 400hp/410tq Package
- 4.10 Rear Axle
- Cat Back Chambered Exhaust
- High Flow Air Box Lid with ZL1 Decal
- Front & Rear Eibach 1.5″ Lowering Springs
- Z06 Wheels
- Z06 Brakes
- Z06 Slotted Rotors
- 7500 series PENSKE double adjustable nitrogen filled shocks
- Light Weight Billet Flywheel
- All New Grille w/1969 ZL1 Bow Tie Emblem
- Goodyear SuperCar Tires
- Black Rear Tail Light Panel
- Camaro Rear Tail Panel Letters in Chrome
- Hood/Roof/Trunk Accent Stripes
- ZL1 Numbered Key Fobs
- ZL1 Floor Mats
- Black Hurst Shift Ball
- Horsepower Console Plaque
- Car Cover with ZL1 Logo
- ZL1 Cloisonné Fender Badging
- All New Silver Face Gauges with ZL1 Logo
- Rearview Mirror with Compass and Auto-Dimmer
- Mobil 1 Oil Fill Cap & Decal
- Power Antenna
- Short Throw Shift Stick
The Holy Grail of the GMMG builds, if not all of fourth-generation Camaros, was the ZL1 Supercar Phase III. This car got you all of the same bits above, but now the engine was a GMMG-built 427 cubic inch V8 making 600 HP and 575 lb-ft. That power fired through a six-speed manual transmission to the rear wheels. Here’s what GMMG says about what went into the build:
Engine Description
- Cylinder Case GM Motorsports C5R Race Case
- Crank Shaft (Callies) Forged 4340 steel crank with 4.0” stroke
- Connecting Rods (Callies) 6.125” Billet 4340 steel rods with ARP fasteners
- Pistons 4.125” bore lightweight (JE) pistons, designed for this specific application, ultra precision machining with certification and matching pins
- Ring Pack File fit specific metric (JE) rings
- Camshaft Hydraulic Roller designed specifically for GMMG Phase III application
- Cylinder Heads GMMG Phase III CNC ported LS-6 heads with full radius valve seats
- Valves 2.055” intake and 1.600” exhaust with undercut swirl polished stems
- Timing Chain High strength roller timing chain
- Pushrods One piece 4130 steel (Comp) pushrods
- Valve Retainers Titanium retainers
- Valve Springs Tapered springs with 320 lbs open pressure specifically designed for LS6 cylinder heads
- Head Gasket Composite big bore (Cometic) head gasket
- Harmonic Damper Special (ATI) Crank Damper
Chassis Upgrade Description
- Intake Special “Wilson Manifolds” Modified Holley Aluminum Intake With ZL1 Number Engraved on Top
- Exhaust Special Phase 3 Only 1 7/8” Headers, 3” Y-pipe, with 4” Collector, and Rear Electric Cutout with Dash Switch
Of the 69 ZL1 Supercars built, it doesn’t seem to be known exactly how many were built into ZL1 Supercar Phase IIIs. It’s believed that as few as 31 cars to as many as 39 cars ended up with this package. The Volo Auto Museum in Volo, Illinois, is selling ZL1 Supercar number 55, a Phase III model. The museum says only 37 ZL1 Supercars were made with the tire-shredding 427. Either way, you are unlikely to see one of these at your local car show.
There are no professional reviews on these cars and hardly any videos about them. In terms of sound, here’s the best video I’ve found:
Sadly, GMMG, Inc. hasn’t been around since the Great Recession and according to Matt Avery, Matt Murphy has long disappeared from the public light. Murphy built roughly around 550 cars before demand became too high for him to meet. Allegedly, some customers became upset with wait times, and eventually, Berger ended its relationship with Murphy. So, what you see is what you get. There will be no more GMMG Camaros.
So, this 2002 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Supercar Phase III is an orphan, but one that packs a ton of firepower. Consider that at the time, a 2002 Chevy Corvette Z06 made 405 HP while a Ferrari Enzo, a legitimate supercar, made 660 HP. So, I think Murphy wasn’t fibbing with the model name.
How much will this Grail set you back? Well, the car currently being sold by the Volo Auto Museum was sold in 2022 in a Barrett-Jackson auction for $115,500. Volo wants to let it go for $149,998. Has the car appreciated that much in two years? I’m not sure, but it might be a long time before you see another one of these. At the very least, at just 413 miles on the odometer, this might be one of the nicest fourth-gen Camaros out there.
As the latest chapter of the Camaro begins to draw to a close, GMMG is a reminder of the hot-rodding that used to be. If you were a GM fan and wanted a supercar with a Camaro badge, GMMG was willing to give a handful of people just that. In the process, Murphy created some of the rarest and coolest Camaros ever built.
Do you know of or own a car, bus, motorcycle, or something else worthy of being called a ‘holy grail’? Send me an email at mercedes@theautopian.com or drop it down in the comments!
(Images: VoloCars, unless otherwise noted.)
This is awesome…I want one!
Great article!
That flat black rear panel is awful looking, like it was damaged and the owner couldn’t afford to paint the replacement. On the phase 1 and two cars the only special item is the shock package. The ls7 sis cool but not that special.
Who *are* you?
I get that it’s rare, the engine is cool, and it might appreciate to the point where $150k will seem like a bargain, but if it wasn’t for that last bit of speculation, would anyone want to spend that much on one of these? They built a million of these chassis, so the car in itself is not rare at all nor especially sought after and if the driving experience of that kind of power in one of these is the goal, ballpark replicating this would be a fraction as much. Then there’s the build quality and interior plastics and design that were embarrassingly bad and I’m not generally one to get all wrapped up in fine textured plastics with perfect alignment and such unless the price exceeds the excuses, which this most certainly does for $150k or, really, even half that. Someone will buy it, anyway.
The hockey stick just looks stupid on this car.
Was gonna say that too. Actually wish these had been done as Firebirds, because the front end of the Camaros did not look good to me.
But the damn stripe just looks really bad.
Add in the dumb wheels, and “ass in the air” stance, and this looks like the fever dream of some kid with too much money with no sense of what looks good at all.
Apparently the American Racing wheels didn’t come with the car. Either they had the stock 35th Anniversary SS wheels or wheels from the C5 Corvette Z06 off the showroom floor. Somebody at some point thought the American Racing Torq Thrust Ms looked better than the likely Z06 5123s.
Thanks.
$149,000 and its still slathered in GM’s CPA-approved government plastic? LOL
As a guy in their mid-40’s… I still find these cars to be VERY fugly looking. That and they look like cheap Rubbermaid plastic. Maybe someday my opinions will change but I really do not like the design language used in the 90’s when it came to cars. Its like we went from one extreme to another. In the 80’s it was all about making cars look like boxes aka, Chrysler K cars, Fox body Mustangs or whatever. I was sort of ok with that. But in the 90’s it was like everyone decided to make cars look like Jellybeans on wheels and the Camaro is about the worst save maybe for the 2nd gen Taurus.
You’re not the only one. The “427” and pin stripe over the purple (blue?) looks divine if you zoom on and can see literally only that, in isolation. (Haha, another comment posted while I was typing says the hockey stick looks stupid. Agreed.)
Put the car into your eyes, or worse, the interior, and the illusion falls apart. It’s round and pointy and ugly and cheap. It’s not hard to imagine “little tykes” debossed on the other side of the plastics, since it’s clearly factory reject stock that didn’t take up the bright dyes. The chrome looks like the tawdry hot rod trash from the kind of car TV show your grandpa would fall asleep to. And finally that GMMG badge looks so bad I zoomed in to see, who the hell put a misplaced bumper sticker on this apparent collector’s car?
Oh. The manufacturer did.
I loved these cars when new, in fact I still have one, a 2000 Firebird Formula. I think the Pontiacs have aged better than the Camaro, however, I definitely think the 3rd gens have aged much better.
When these were still new, a guy on the LS1 forum summed it up perfectly: “these are great drivetrains with a crap car wrapped around them”, or something to that effect.
On this particular example, I actually like the white hockey stick over blue (My Firebird is that same color), but the wheels are too big.
Just to simmer myself down a little bit, I agree the Firebird looks better, then and now 🙂
The LT1 Firebird Formula (pre nostril hood) was a damn nice looking car. I could never quite get on board with the Trans Am body kit, then the LS1 models came out and improved the HP while ruining the looks.
The WS6 was so much better looking, catfishes got nothing on them.
Back in 2002 there was one of these 427 Camaros running around Houston. It would occasionally (I saw it twice) show up to one of the informal car meets that took place in the parking lot of the Waffle House off of Highway 6 and I-10. I remember the first time I saw it there, blue with the white hockey stick stripes just like the one in the article, fresh from delivery with paper tags and ~120 miles on it. That 427 with the GMMG exhaust sounded absolutely menacing. My heads/cammed LT1 Z28 sounded vicious, but even I had to give credit that the work GMMG did with that 427 was epic.
Do tuner cars really count though?
Exactly. If (basically) custom built cars can be Holy Grail, why shouldn’t your buddy Gary’s drag car count?
Matt has been recommending tuned cars lately. We figure the GMMG builds count since, unlike Gary’s drag car, these were built with the blessing of GM, sold by a Chevy dealership, and were intended to be offered with a warranty. Something closer to the Ford F-150 FP700 than a shed build.
Then again, we did label the Uncertain-T as a Holy Grail. But there is literally just one of those…
So the FQ440 Evolution is game since they were sold at dealerships with a warranty? There was also an FQ470 but no warranty on that.
Would be cool to see an article on that. 220hp per liter or 235hp per liter from a car in a similar nostalgic era.
I still don’t think it’s the same thing as, say, the Mugen Civic Si from 2008.
The warranty is an interesting place to put the threshold tho
Do Saleen Mustangs count?
Or the Roush Mustangs of that era. Roush isn’t that different than Holman-Moody was back in the day for Ford, basically a factory-sanctioned racing front.
I mean, I’m not sure we’ve ever really defined thresholds for this series other than the vague parameters of rare enough, weird enough, cool enough, or all of the above. I try to keep it about as close to “a regular person could walk into a dealer and buy this” as much as possible.
It’s not really though, because you can get the FP700 from most Ford dealers. You can only get this car from one very specific builder/”dealer”. So, yes, it had a factory warranty, it was still a basically a custom build.
Admittedly, it was a poor example, but I hope you at least understand what I was trying to say. As I noted above, this series has grown beyond its “here’s a rare-ish Jeep with a manual transmission” roots.
That has, understandably, generated questions about what is or what is not a Holy Grail, as evidenced by this thread and some others. I follow the rules established by David and Matt of vehicles that are weird, cool, rare, the best of their kind, or any combination of those. Each nomination goes through an editor first, if it wasn’t recommended by an editor like this Camaro was. We believe it fits that admittedly vague classification.
The team has voted to keep the Holy Grail name around even if the scope has perhaps changed over time. So, there’s a little of the curtain pulled back for you, if it helps.
So does any tuner that backs up their work with a warranty count then? For example, APR (at least used to) offer tunes through dealers and would back it up with a warranty should VW/Audi deny the claim.
Honestly, I don’t think we should be comparing this specific GMMG example to the FP700 because because the GMMG stuff was essentially limited to one specific dealer and sold in so few quantities. On the other hand, the FP700 is truly supported by Ford, marketed by Ford, made up of parts with Ford PNs, warrantied by Ford, sold at the majority of their dealers, and would be serviced by the majority of their dealers. It’s a huge difference than essentially a handful of cars that were rubber stamped by the manufacturer knowing whatever warranty claims would be highly highly highly isolated to like 30 cars sold from one dealer.
If it could be ordered through an OEM dealer, Chevy in this case, then I’d say yes. Like twin turbo vettes too.
ok cool, then there’s the TRD supercharged Toyotas of the 90s and 2000s, the GM Performance Vibe, the GM Performance Cobalt and HHR SS, Dinan BMW, Stasis Audis, etc.
Yeah I’m fine with that. I do like the line in the sand to be if it has a warranty or not…however I’m not really convinced that the 600+hp variant of this specific Camaro really did have a warranty that would have been honored.
If the motors were handbuilt in very small quantities, and the motor blows up (no fault of your own) at the very end of the powertrain warranty period… were they really going to honor that powertrain warranty? Where would they get the motor from?
We did write about one of those back in December.
To be clear, this series has certainly expanded beyond super rare and unknown production vehicles. We do experiment with the Holy Grail concept, which has understandably confused some people. But we’ve decided to keep the name around as “Holy Grails,” at least to us, has become recognizable as a weekly car history series. As always, we’re always interested in transparency!
Anyway, here you go!
https://www.theautopian.com/the-toyota-trd-solara-took-a-forgettable-coupe-added-a-supercharger-and-turned-it-into-a-tire-killing-tuner-car-holy-grails/
Great article as usual Mercedes! These guys are getting way too literal for a series titled after a running joke lol
That motor looks ready to jump the hell up out that engine bay.
Performance can’t fix ugly, but the sound goes a long way towards soothing my soul.
Yeah, design-wise, I actually prefer the look of the stock version for overall balance. This one has better performance, but seems to amp up the ugly along the way.
You were so close…the real Holy Grail 4th Gen is the 2002 Dick Harrell Supercar with the custom wide body and C5R 630 HP 427 LS V8. They are very unique and only 32 were built, 30 of which were available to customers.
Some day when I win the lotto there will be signs…and two of them in my garage.
As I said in the piece, GMMG produced several grail-worthy vehicles that are perhaps looking more into at another time. I should have mentioned the Dick Harrell Supercar!