By 1969 and ‘70-1/2, Chevrolet was offering some VERY stout Camaros. The
Z-28 was a well balanced street brute and the 396/375 Camaro in good tune could
handle its own. But that wasn’t enough for one Joel Rose of Long Island, New
York.
Joel had been running his little speed shop called “Motion
Performance” since the early ‘60s. Carroll Shelby’s success for Ford and Hertz
Rent-A-Car was legendary. So Rosen figured that he might be able to strike a
deal with local Baldwin Chevrolet and offer “super car” versions of the
Chevrolet line of cars. Amazing as it seems, the deal was made and Rosen was in
business doing conversions, ala’ Reeves Callaway (except that there were minimal
emission controls in the olden days).
Rosen called his creation, “Phase
III Supercars.” There was no Phase I or II, “Phase III” just sounded cool. So
here was the deal. Mr. Customer buys a Chevy from Baldwin Chevrolet and chooses
the Phase III package (they had brochures to look at and everything). Your new
Chevrolet was then delivered to the Motion shop where the conversion took place
based on the options chosen by Mr. Customer. High performance street machines
were becoming complex, so for a fee, Rosen and his crew would put everything
into the car that any street racer-type might put into his car.
To top
it all off, Rosen guaranteed that when they were done bolting on, replacing, and
tuning, the car would run in the 12s on the quarter-mile. And lastly, since the
car was technically “brand new” somehow or another, the cars managed to still be
under the full factory warrantee!
