The interior body shell is basically solid (except for the trunk), with only dry weather surface rust to indicate all those year’s in the Australian outback under a rickety, ancient wooden roofed, lean-to.  One rear floor pan is a little thin and the dash top panel will be replaced.  As a result of the hundreds of cycles of raising and lowering, the body pivoting on the rear axle, we found one small stress crack through the tail pan and the entire trunk floor devastated with numerous fractures and cracks, with one extending halfway thru the RH frame rail.
    We’ve first “washed” the Lemans Blue lacquer original show paint from the exterior, exposing a thin layer of 36 year old bondo and filler spotted and skinned all over the original factory paint, indicating these early Vin# display cars were pulled directly from assembly sometime after the paint process.  The brand new Camaro was then prepped for show to the public; exposed panel seams, especially on the door jambs and firewall, filled solid, smoothed and blended.   All panels must have been meticulously block sanded extra straight as befitting the new show quality paint.  Interestingly, the cowl panel stamped Vin numerals are unusually deeply indented, obviously not gang stamped, and with the original factory paint overcoat intact as each numeral was first filled with seam sealer (for protection?), then skinned over with bondo as with the rest of the car before final show paint.

       The exterior looked, right off the container, as if caught in some monstrous hailstorm.  We’re over 500 studs and still counting.  Each will pull the original metal back into shape.  Once structurally sound, we’ll finish the lacquer paint removal; mount the shell on a rotisserie and media blast the undercarriage, stripping the entire shell to bare metal. 

Our front fender rear halves are both in excellent condition and will strip and refinish easily.  The two nose section’s header panels are beyond salvage, but we fortunately have early stamping GM NOS panels for these.  Everything else looks good.  Every fastener used on the display car was heavily chrome plated, and the variety and styles used are all over the map (Show & Display must have had a pretty big bucket!).  Nonetheless, our passion shows through, and each was photographed, cataloged and will be either replated or replaced with identical hardware.