Third-gen Camaro Sports Street-trim Churns Out 1000-plus HP
Jessie’s Performance Inc. turned up to Holley LS Fest in Las Vegas with an ‘insane’ third-generation Chevrolet Camaro.
One can always rely on Los Angeles-based commercial automotive photographer Larry Chen and YouTube channel Hoonigan AutoFocus to call attention to some mesmerizing builds. In one of his most recent videos, Chen met with the owner of the texas-based custom car outfit Jessie’s Performance Inc. at the Holley LS Fest in Las Vegas to discuss one “insane” third-generation Chevrolet Camaro.
Jessie has worked on quite a few F-body Camaros, which helped him put together this 1000 HP drag strip monster. The owner wanted the car to retain its factory styling, which it does for the most part. The car still features most of its original body panels, but the fenders and one of the headlight buckets had to be modified to accommodate 67/62 Mirror Image VS Racing turbochargers. The team restored the bodywork by stripping it down to bare metal and addressing every imperfection.
“It had some old bodywork that wasn’t that good before. Straightened all that bodywork out and just repainted the whole car you know, and that’s essentially it. That was the easiest, that was the easy task on this car,” said Jessie. He further added, “When it showed up, it looked like a pretty clean car. Like I said, we did find some old bodywork that was starting to lift and stuff, and that’s why you know we started the snowball effect of bodywork.”
Jessie’s Performance built the turbo kit for the Camaro and mated it to a CX racing intercooler. When running on E85, the car’s forged bottom end 5.3-liter LS motor produces around 1000 HP. Jessie claims that at full boost, the turbocharged powertrain can produce up to 1250 HP of maximum power. The engine is mated to a Turbo 400 reverse pattern transmission with a 3600 stall converter. Jessie also revealed that the car’s transbrake can handle up to 2000 horsepower.
The team had to cut the front-end and fabricated its own tubular structure. The car rides on a high-performance QA1 coil-over suspension setup on both ends. On the safety front, the cabin gets a six-point Chromoly cage and continues to feature the original door panels, dashboard, and center console. It took the team at Jessie’s performance more than 400 man-hours to bring this radical ensemble together.
“The thing is that these cars work really well with the torque arm suspension on the drag strip, and they handle really well on a road racecourse, and they got good street manners, so all around, like no matter which avenue you take, this is actually a really good chassis to start with,” said Jessie.
Image Source: Hoonigan AutoFocus
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