TAMING THE BEAST

JOE ESPOSITO'S TWIN-TURBO BIG-BLOCK '68 CAMARO WILL SOON BE A STREETDRIVEN POWERHOUSE

- CARLY DALE

SOUTH Australia churns out fully engineered, mega-tough streeters at a rate of knots, including Joe Esposito's killer 1968 Camaro RS/SS featured here. This twin-turbo, 615ci big block-equipped pony car will be wearing rego plates by the time you're flipping through these pages, and even better, it's been finished to such a high standard that it's already claimed some Elite-level tinware.

Thanks to his day job as the SA consultant for PPG Paints, Joe has the know-how to achieve a first-class result, and proudly states that the lion's share of the assembly happened in his home shed. "I've been with PPG for 30 years, and while I go into resto shops daily, I didn't have the coin to send the car to one, so I built this at home. I just wanted to create a nice, tough street car," he explains.

When Joe bought the Camaro back in '97, he'd initially planned on an old-school pro streeter, but a heavy tub job was all that transpired before other projects absorbed his attention. A pair of HK Monaros were the primary culprits, though once complete, their sale funded the rest of the Camaro build.

Finally, a decade after purchasing it, Joe properly hooked into the '68. By then, Adelaide International Raceway was a shadow of its former self, which really took the shine off the race aspect of the build for Joe not to mention he'd just returned from a heady trip to SEMA. Both these factors influenced the direction of the build.

"I loved the no-chrome look the American guys were doing, and at the time we had AU$1.05 against US$1, so it was the best time to buy parts. People were going berserk," Joe recalls. Investments in decent upgrades for the car followed, including a tubular front end, custom billet rims and a stonking twinturbo big-block powerhouse.