Article: An Unfair Advantage?

[Steve Holmes]

With Donohue’s ’68 car gathering dust at Sam Posey’s (Posey himself had a one-off drive for Shelby in 1969, and won!), Penske bought the car back, and mechanically upgraded it to 1969 spec (but retaining the ’68 body), installing a new motor, new paint, front and rear bumpers (new Trans-Am rules for 1969 required bumpers) and replaced the American Racing wheels for yellow painted Minilites, which the team were using on their ’69 cars. But fortunately for Penske, its services weren’t required, and at the end of the season, with Penske signing a lucrative new deal to run the factory Javelin’s for 1970, the three team cars were moved on to new owners.

The 1968 Donohue Camaro was purchased by Craig Murray, President of the recently opened (1968) Sears Point Raceway (now Sonoma Raceway). Murray had only just gained his competition licence in early 1969, and spent much of that year racing an MG Midget in various West Coast production sports car events, before purchasing the Camaro. He changed nothing, other than adding a wing mirror, which none of the Penske cars were fitted with, and changed the race number from Donohue’s #6, to #35. He then raced the car at selected Trans-Am events in 1970, recording a best finish of eighth at Laguna Seca. He also entered local West Coast A/Sedan races, plus a USAC Stock Car race at Laguna Seca. The USAC event marked the first appearance in Northern California for USAC Stock Cars, and the first USAC event to combine stock cars and pony cars. Murray finished the race in fourth, behind a pair of Plymouth Road Runner Superbirds (which placed first and third), and another Camaro.



Throughout the 1970s, after Craig Murray’s ownership, the Camaro changed hands several times, moving to John Elder in Minnesota, before it was purchased by Bruce Belcher in Idaho, and then Bill Freeman in California. At the time of purchase, Freeman was in the process of teaming up with Paul Newman, establishing Newman-Freeman Racing. They bought a Porsche 911 RSR, and the Camaro was sold once more, to Bob Eckhardt, also in California, who raced it twice in IMSA events at Ontario and Riverside.

Sedan racing changed beyond all recognition during the 1970s. The SCCA’s three big professional road racing series’, the Trans-Am, Can-Am, and Formula A each either faded or failed altogether, while former SCCA executive director and creator of the Trans-Am series, John Bishop, launched the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) in the early ‘70s, which quickly rose to prominence as the most important professional road racing sedan championship in the US. As if to confirm acceptance of this, the SCCA changed their Trans-Am rules to mimic those of IMSA (who themselves were using FIA European Groups 1 to 4 rules, plus their own home-grown All-American GT), which allowed for huge aluminum engines, big wheels and tires, massive flares, and even tube-frame chassis’. With such change taking place, many of the old original Trans-Am cars were either chopped up and modified heavily to keep pace, or simply retired, and, in some cases, scrapped altogether. But not so the Mark Donohue ‘68 Penske Camaro. Somehow, the Camaro snuck right through the crazy, hazy ‘70s virtually unscathed and untampered with. Even the Sunoco blue paint and yellow Minilite wheels remained intact, until the car was purchased off Eckhardt by Tom McIntyre in the early 1980s. Tom still owns the Camaro to this day.



Recognising the cars enormous historical significance, and the growing interest in early Trans-Am race cars, Tom spent several years restoring the Camaro back to its 1968 guise, finally returning it to the track once more in 1993. Its first event was at Sonoma, formerly Sears Point, the race track at which Craig Murray once presided. The level to which the Camaro has been restored is stunning, and accurate in every way, right down to the application of red tape beneath the doors to indicate where the Penske crew members were to shove their jacks as they belted out one of their furious Trans-Am pit stops.

Tom is one of the leading-lights in the ever-growing Historic Trans-Am group, the most popular group in vintage racing for cars that competed in the Trans-Am series from 1966-1972. Interest in Historic Trans-Am is huge, with cars being added all the time. Since that first event in 1993, Tom has raced his beautiful Penske Camaro all over the US and Canada.



Fittingly, a chance meeting would bring Tom and Craig Murray together, and the pair have remained friends ever since. Tom explains; “Following the 1969 season, Penske sold all three of their Camaros (the pair of ’69 cars and the updated Donohue ’68) with the ’68 car going to Craig Murray, the President of Sears Point Raceway. Well, thirty years later I was under the car cleaning up something and I hear this man say to his Grandson, “Well look at this… Your Grandpa once had a race car just like this one”. I nearly banged my head on the underside of the car as I said, ”Your name wouldn’t be Craig Murray would it?” Sure enough, that lucky day I found the man who bought the ’68 Camaro from Penske.

“We spent the next two hours talking and telling all the stories of who, what, where, when and why he did what he did with the car. It was amazing to see the glow as he told these stories”. Over the years Tom has met and spoken to all the prior owners of the Camaro, hearing their stories and seeing their photos, with each one explaining their time with the car and the success they had with it. As with any historic race car, half the fun in owning it is joining the timeline dots together that make up its full history.