Sydney’s Sam Caruana is fairly familiar with the process of having cars featured in Street Machine. Whether it’s his own Summernats Top 10 HJ Premier from the cover of our March 2011 issue, or any number of customer cars in his role of shop manager at Sydney-based feature-car factory ProFlo Performance, he’s been in the SM orbit for decades. Perhaps that’s why his story plays out like so many we’ve heard before.

First published in the January 2025 issue of Street Machine

“I built the Prem as a driver, but Paul and I got carried away!” he laughs. “It still hasn’t done a single street mile, and I don’t think I’m motivated to use that car on the road.”

So, with the HJ marked as a show car legend and piece of garage jewellery, Sam was keen to scratch the itch for a street car.

“I’d always wanted a ’68 Camaro,” he says. “Would you believe I’d actually looked at this very car before I started building my HJ? I wanted to buy it and give it the same treatment the Prem got, but I’d owned the Prem since I was 17, so I built it instead.”

In 2012, Sam finally got his chance – the Camaro came up for sale. “The previous owner had built it through ProFlo so I knew the car very well,” he says. “A week later, it was in my garage!”

Picking up someone else’s project car can be fraught with peril, but given this one had some of the country’s finest car crafters work their magic on it, Sam figured it was a pretty safe bet.

“We pulled it apart and detailed the entire thing, cleaned it thoroughly and put it back together,” Sam says. With that done, he then turned his attention to fettling with the 6/71-blown small-block the car came with. “We actually started by turning the power down 60hp and removing the intercooler to reduce the engine height, but I’d already had a taste of the power, and I wanted more!” he says.

Sam and Paul Sant went through a few upgrades, including swapping to an 8/71 blower, switching to E85 fuel and ditching the double pumpers for some EFI. But as the power figures increased with each enhancement, they soon became fixated on a four-figure dyno sheet. “The better crank, rods, pistons and block allowed us to make more power and be more reliable,” explains Sam.

The Dart Little M-based 416ci stroker that motivates the Camaro boasts a stellar collection of primo performance parts, but it’s the giant 8.3-litre Whipple blower now topping the beast that we’re particularly fascinated by.

“The 6/71 and 8/71 blowers just made everything too hot,” Sam says. “Being a screw blower, the Whipple is more efficient, meaning we made an extra 200rwhp on less boost and took 100 degrees out of the exhaust temps.

The giant huffer is designed as a direct replacement for the Roots-style pumps, so the boys could reuse a lot of the infrastructure from the Camaro’s previous combo.

The Turbo 400 is another legacy item from the previous build, but the diff is a new addition. It’s a spicy ProFlo-fabricated unit with 3.25:1 gears, 35-spline axles to turn those giant Schott billet wheels, and a Wavetrac centre. “They’re much nicer to drive on the street than a full spool, and it takes a lot of stress off the car having a limited-slip centre that you can rely on at the track but opens up on the street,” Sam explains.

Another huge change was the introduction of EFI that’s been cleverly designed to look like a mechanical injection set-up. A Haltech Elite 2500 does the thinking for the Camaro and is backed up by a raft of sensors, including EGTs and the trick cam sync and crank trigger kit in the interests of reliability and driveability.

Despite having over 1000 galloping ponies on board, the Camaro has impeccable street manners, according to Sam. “You can drive this car anywhere,” he insists. “It never gets hot, and surprisingly, it’s not too bad on fuel.”

Sam isn’t too shy about giving the Camaro a hiding on the track, either. “I drive the wheels off this car! It goes to Powercruise every year, Autofest and Summernats, and we’ll cruise the streets with a full car-load,” he says.

As the proud owner of one of Australia’s toughest garages, Sam is pleased as punch that his sons Mark and Jason have continued the family legacy of tough pro street cars. “Mark’s HK sedan was featured in the November 2024 issue of Street Machine, and we’ve just started building an HQ for Jason,” he says. “My wife is totally supportive of my car addiction as long as we’re having fun, and I’m spending quality time with my boys.”

SAM CARUANA
1968 CHEVROLET CAMARO

THANKS
Paul Sant and the team at ProFlo Performance; Mark Sant at Ontrak Auto Electrical; Adam at Just Engine Management; my wife Lourdes and my boys Mark and Jason.