CHEVY CANAM

The Chevrolet Firenza Can-Am Is A Tiny Muscle Car With A Z28 Heart

This brilliantly mad, Vauxhall-based homologation special had enough pace to worry Ferraris of its day

There’s a long and rich history of American V8s getting stuffed into British cars. There was the Ford small-block-powered Sunbeam Tiger, the Jensen Interceptor and its big block Chevrolet, and the AC Cobra - perhaps the most famous US/UK automotive collaboration ever.There is coming together of British chassis design and American muscle you might not have heard of, though: the Chevrolet Firenza Can-Am. Given the choice of branding it certainly sounds like an American car, but don’t be fooled - it’s actually a British chassis powered by an American V8 that was born in South Africa.

The regular Chevrolet Firenza was, in fact, a Vauxhall Firenza. Owned by General Motors at the time (GM’s ownership of the British company ran from 1925 right the way up until 2017’s purchase by PSA), some of Vauxhall’s products were built and sold in South Africa and rebadged as Chevrolets.

The Cavalier became the Vauxhall Chevette, although the Firenza kept its model name and merely switched out the branding. Like the UK-sold version, it was powered by four-cylinder engines: a 1.2-litre Vauxhall unit, and a 2.5-litre Chevrolet lump, both built in South Africa. But there was an exception.

Enjoy the 1973 Chevy CanAm Pics and History. As you'll see, this really is a rarity of a Classic. Suffice to say that only 100 of these were ever made and not in North America either, these rare Classics were built in South Africa.

In South Africa, Chevrolet was GM's main brand name until 1982, with a number of Vauxhall Motors and Holden derivatives being built under the Chevy name from 1964.

In the 1970s, the advertising jingle "braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies and Chevrolet" (adapted from the US "Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pies and Chevrolet" came to epitomise the ideal lifestyle of white male South Africans. Holden in Australia used the jingle "Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos and Holden cars". Originally, Chevrolets were CKD kits of US models assembled in their plant in Port Elizabeth.

However, since South Africa was right-hand drive and the US was left-hand drive, along with encouragement by the South Africans.African government to use local content, Chevrolets such as the Biscayne were eventually made entirely in South Africa.by the 1970s, larger South African Chevrolets were based on Australian General Motors-Holden's models, the Kommando being based on the Holden Kingswood and the Constantia on the Statesman, while the smaller Firenza was based on the Vauxhall Viva. The Chevrolet Nomad sold in South Africa was entirely different from the Nomad sold in America; whereas the American Nomad was originally conceived as a station wagon version of the Corvette and eventually became the station wagon version of the Bel Air, the South African Nomad was an SUV of truck proportions before SUVs were popular. Due to local content laws the cars usually received different engines than in their home markets.

SOUTH AFRICA

We have South African touring car legend Basil Van Rooyen to thank for this absurd little creation. Keen to create a car to take on the seemingly unbeatable Capri Perana in the South African Argus Production Car championship, Van Rooyen built a couple of Holden V8-powered Firenzas and brought them along to GM’s South African HQ in Port Elizabeth. It seems execs liked what they saw, and an officially-produced V8 Firenza was given the go-ahead.The Holden units were just too big for the regulations, which stipulated a maximum engine size of 5.0 litres. The solution came in the form of some Camaro Z28 V8s which had become available after Chevrolet pulled out of the North American-held Trans-Am Series.

The engine developed around 290bhp, which in a car weighing not much over a tonne, made for some serious performance. Top speed was over 140mph, and it’d do 0-60mph in 5.4 seconds. In 1972. The Ferrari 365 GT4 that came out the following year was only just quicker in the benchmark sprint. Imagine Toyota bringing out a GT86 with an LC500 engine and the kind of acceleration that’d concern an 812 Superfast driver. At the time, this hot-rodded Firenza must have seemed completely bonkers. Hell, it still does.

The suspension and brakes were - thankfully - comprehensively upgraded to cope with the car’s newfound poke, and additional chassis bracing was added. Power was sent to the - no doubt overwhelmed - rear wheels via a four-speed manual gearbox and a limited-slip differential.The car went by several names, with GM’s marketing people insisting on calling it the ‘Little Chev’ Firenza V8, which didn’t really do it justice. Van Rooyen said in an interview that he wished it to be called ‘Mamba’.Just 100 were built to satisfy homologation rules. We can’t be sure how many have survived, but you’re extremely unlikely to ever see an example on the road. At least one has made its way to the UK.

As for the racing version, its time competing was short lived - as a consequence of the 1973 oil crisis, motor racing was temporarily banned in South Africa at the end of the ‘73 season. No matter: ‘Mamba’ is still a legend in our eyes.

Opel models

However, these were replaced by Opel models like the Rekord, Commodore, and Senator, and in 1982 the Chevrolet brand name was dropped in favour of Opel. Because of the political climate at the time, GM decided to divest from South Africa in 1986, and a local group eventually bought out GM's South African operations (including the Port Elizabeth plant) and renamed the company as the Delta Motor Corporation, which concentrated on Opels, Isuzus, and Suzukis, built under licence.However, thanks to an improved political climate in the 1990s, GM decided to reenter South Africa, eventually buying out the whole of Delta. In 2001, the Chevrolet name made a comeback, used on the Lumina, a rebadged Holden Commodore, and later on, on the Daewoo range of cars.Current Chevrolets include the Spark (a rebadged Daewoo Matiz), Aveo, Optra, Cruze, the Lumina (including the Ute model), the Vivant, an MPV that is a rebadged version of the Daewoo Tacuma, and a pick-up version of the Opel Corsa known as the Corsa Ute.Well we’re nearing the end of the year, and you’d think there would be a bit of a slow down in the hot cars, but that’s far from the truth. It seems our local chaps are not too bothered about shops closing or even the interest rate messing around with car builds. They just carry on doing what they love to do. Take the cover car for example. This Can-Am has had more than enough blood, sweat and tears poured into it, not to mention copious amounts of money. I think all the hard work has paid off though, the car looks insane, makes mad power and is still licensed for the street.The Canadian-American Challenge Cup or Can-Am, was an SCCA/CASC sports car racing series from 1966 to 1986.Can-Am started out as a race series for Group 7 sports racers with two races in Canada (Can) and four races in the United States of America (Am). The series was initially sponsored by Johnson Wax. The Series was governed by rules called out under the FIA Group 7 category with unrestricted engine capacity and few other technical restrictions.The Group 7 category was essentially a formule libre for sports cars; the regulations were minimal and permitted unlimited engine sizes (and allowed turbocharging and supercharging), virtually unrestricted aerodynamics, and were as close as any major international racing series ever got to anything goes.As long as the car had two seats and bodywork enclosing the wheels, and met basic safety standards, it was legal. Group 7 had arisen as a category for non-homologated sports car 'specials' in Europe and for a while in the 1960s Group 7 racing was popular in the United Kingdom as well as a class in hillclimb racing in Europe.Group 7 cars were designed more for short-distance sprints than for endurance racing. Some Group 7 cars were also built in Japan by Nissan and Toyota, but these did not compete outside their homeland (though some of the Can-Am competitors went over to race against them occasionally).

SCCA sports car racing

SCCA sports car racing was becoming more popular with European constructors and drivers, and the United States Road Racing Championship for large-capacity sports racers eventually gave rise to the Group 7 Can-Am series. There was good prize and appearance money and plenty of trade backing; the series was lucrative for its competitors but resulted, by its end, in truly outrageous cars with well over 1000 horsepower (750 kW) (some teams claimed 1,500 hp (1,100 kW) in qualifying trim), wings, active downforce generation, very light weight and unheard of speeds. Similar Group 7 cars ran in the European Interserie series, but this was much lower-key than the Can-Am.
On-track, the series was initially dominated by Lola, followed by a period in which it became known as the 'Bruce and Denny Show', the works McLaren team dominating until the Porsche 917 was perfected and became almost unbeatable. After Porsche's withdrawal, Shadow dominated the last season before Can-Am faded away to be replaced by Formula 5000. Racing was rarely close - one marque was usually dominant - but the noise and spectacle of the cars made the series highly popular.The energy crisis and the increased cost of competing in Can-Am meant that the series folded after the relatively lacklustre 1974 season; the single seater Formula 5000 series became the leading road-racing series in North America and many of the Can-Am drivers and teams continued to race in this. F5000's reign lasted for only two years, with a second generation of Can-Am following.This was a fundamentally different series based initially on converted Formula 5000 cars with closed-wheel bodies. There was also a 2L class based on Formula Two chassis. The second incarnation of Can-Am faded away as IMSA and CART racing became more popular in the early 1980s but remained active until 1987.
Can-Am remains a well-remembered form of racing due to its popularity at the time, the spectacular cars and the lineup of talented drivers. Can-Am cars remain popular in historic racing.

Can-Am was the birth place and proving ground for (what was at the time) outrageous technology. Can-Am cars were among the first race cars to sport wings, effective turbocharging, ground-effect aerodynamics, and aerospace materials like titanium. This led to the eventual downfall of the original series when costs got very much out of hand, but during its height Can-Am cars were at the cutting edge of racing technology and were frequently as fast as or even faster around laps of circuits used by both series than their contemporary Formula One cars. Noted constructors in the Can-Am Series included McLaren, Chaparral, Lola, BRM, Shadow and Porsche.The name was once again revived in 1998, when the United States Road Racing Championship broke away from IMSA. Their top prototype class was named Can-Am, but the series would fold before the end of 1999 before being replaced by the Grand American Road Racing Championship.The Can-Am name would not be retained in the new series.Eventually, the GTPs would evolve into Le Mans Prototypes, the top class of the American Le Mans Series. While significantly different from Can Am series vehicles, LMPs provide a high performance prototype pioneering new technologies, but limited compared to their spiritual predecessors of Can-Am by regulations in the name of cost control and safety.

CHEVY CANAM MOTORS

Super Rare Chevy Can-Am Transformed Into 11-Second Street Car

In the early 70s Ford ruled the racetracks because the best of Chevrolet didn't make it to South Africa, so local dealers created their own monster.Back when sex was safe and racing was dangerous, the Ford Capri Perana was impossible to catch on track, and so local Chevy dealers decided to build 100 special Chevrolet Firenza Can-Am cars in order to homologate the racecar they had built. As you can imagine, there's not many left these days, making original ones collector's items. Jo'burg-based Awie Pretorius is a Can-Am nut and so he procured one to modify a few years ago, much to the dismay of purists. Luckily he has a matching number original too.

The original Firenza Can-Am was nothing special at all, but it was a small 2-door option for a race car, weighing in at just over 2,000 lbs. Any decent motor could make for good power to weight, but with a Competition Camaro Z28 motor shoehorned in things became quite competitive. The 5.0-liter V8 made a decent 290 hp with 290 lb-ft that pushed the Can-Am to 60 mph in just 5.4 seconds, although a long ratio 'box allowed for a top speed of 80 mph in 1st gear alone. The Chevy Can-Am had a top speed of 142 mph, which in 1973 was pretty damn impressive. This was enough for the car to be competitive and hurt the Ford's winning reputation.

Awie's version (nicknamed Rolling Thunder) is stronger with 385 hp and 437 lb-ft, thanks to a list of choice mods - a 4-bolt 350 block, a Scat 383 crank, forged I-beam rods with forged Icon pistons and Hasting rings. Higher up there's a pair of Dart 2 Sportsman heads, a Comp Extreme Energy cam, 1.6-inch roller rockers, an AFR intake, a 650 double pumper carb, a Powerhouse distributor and a full TNT exhaust system, while everything is bolted together with ARP studs and bolts where possible. On the transmission side there's a Turbo 350 'box that's backed up with 3500 rpm Fulrace stall converter. Added up, this rare Chevy Can-Am is an 11-second street car.

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