What The Heck Is A “6813 Camaro”, You Ask?

Anytime you debut a brand new race car, hiccups and bumps in the road are to be expected, but after you’ve spent untold amounts of money and months of long days and longer nights toiling to prepare a new piece from the ground-up, wadding it up or watching it catch fire is the absolute worst case scenario. Unfortunately, stuff happens in drag racing and it happens quick, and whether its the first pass or the thousandth pass, anything can happen.

So the story goes for Pro Modified veteran Mike Janis.

The Elma, New York native and his JanCen crew had just picked up their brand spankin’ new 2013 Camaro from the Race Car Specialties shop just two weeks prior to the NHRA Pro Mod opener in Gainesville, and like a kid with a flashy new toy, were plenty excited to get the new ride out of the box to play with it on the racetrack. After testing at the South Georgia Motorsports Park earlier in the week, Janis officially debuted the new car on Friday afternoon in the opening session of Pro Mod qualifying. In Saturday’s opening round of eliminations, Janis, the No. 16 qualifier, got a huge gift when pole winner Mike Castellana shook the tires and slowed. Janis legged the Camaro through to a winning 6.79 elapsed time, but the gift turned sour at the stripe when the engine erupted in flames. Like a Funny Car fire of old, the flames continued to build as Janis brought the car to a stop, and by then, the brand new nose on the K100 Fuel Treatment machine was a small inferno.

Janis had a date with Eric Dillard in the second round of eliminations on Sunday morning, and like any resourceful team would, they set out to find some way, any way, to make the call.

With help from Swedish racer Adam Flamholc’s team and a host of others, Janis and company made repairs to the front half of the race car, and then proceeded to paint and retro-fit a donor 1968 Camaro nose to the sleek new 2013 Camaro, creating what Janis aptly referred to as a “6813 Camaro”. Despite the generational differences, the old nose and the new body fit together quite nicely, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think that’s how the car was supposed to look.

Following a long afternoon and evening of work, Janis made the call and posted by far his best run of the weekend with a 6.04 against Dillard in that second round, but unfortunately, he came up just short of the 6.00 by the twin-turbo car in the other lane. Just making the bell was a victory in and of itself, for these guys, however. They may not have done it between rounds, but this was a story akin to the infamous roof swap by Raymond Beadle’s team back in 1981.