If you like your muscle cars a little rough around the edges, this one’s for you. Dawn’s 1970 Chevelle keeps much of its original paint and hides a twin-turbo Ford Coyote under the hood.
That Coyote wasn’t always there. Dawn has had the car since he was 15 and rebuilt it several times, once as a drag car that ran the nines, before his friends helped him finish this version for SEMA 2025.
Getting the Coyote in took real work. Dawn welded a chromoly crossmember into the front of the frame, built his own twin-turbo kit and made a cooler that pokes out of the bumper. “I broke it 42 times,” he says.
Behind that bumper, the body is far from show-car shiny. The new panels were matched to the old patina, a burn mark from an old fire is still there, and Dawn calls it “a real blue-collar build.”
Inside, it’s the same mix of new and old. A Tillett carbon seat and a digital dash with push buttons share space with an original seat and a cage from when Dawn got serious about racing.
Even the steering wheel has a story. It came off his late father’s Chris-Craft boat.
On Autotopia LA, the host gets behind that wheel, and the video is worth watching for the sound and the ride.
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More than 1,000 hp is only part of the story. This 1967 Camaro has been rebuilt and retuned for 20 years, with Tom chasing traction, balance and drivability through every new version.
