VIDEO by: Big Red Vimeo
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last few decades, you might have missed this particular ’69 Camaro tearing up road courses, autocross circuits, open road races and YouTube and television. It was even briefly featured in the fourth Fast and Furious installment back in 2008. Known as “Big Red,” and owned by 46-year old R.J. Gottlieb, Big Red has long been a force to be reckoned with (even by its European exotic completion).
Being a legit Rally Sport-Z/28 Camaro and under R.J.’s ownership since the 1980s, the car has been wrecked, rolled, caught on fire, blown several engines… you name it. If you think door dings are bad, you’d probably be appalled by what this Camaro has suffered in the last 30-plus years. However, R.J. isn’t one to let sleeping dogs lie or accept defeat. He just rebuilds and improves.
We could say that it’s LS-pwered, BBC-equppied or has one killer SBC under the hood. Truth it, all of the above is true since R.J. keeps several engines ready to lock and load at a moment’s notice, depending on what the [racing] occasion calls for. He even went head to head against a brand new 5th-gen Z/28 around a road course — with very little time to rebuild the car and adjust its suspension for such a feat. The end result was a brutal situation, but the Camaro continues to soldier on today. In this case, it’s on a practice lap on a circuit around Pikes Peak.
We could go into great detail about the list of modifications under the body, but we’d be here for quite a long time and honestly, the facts and figures would probably change again, before we were finished. Enjoy the clip, and keep an eye out for Gottlieb’s Big Red Camaro at a racing event near you!
Rick Seitz is the owner and founder of AutoCentric Media, the parent company to Timeless Muscle Magazine, and has a true love and passion for all vehicles. When he isn’t tuning, testing, or competing with the magazine’s current crop of project vehicles, he’s busy tinkering and planning the next round modifications for his own cars.
