This Second Gen Camaro Is Finland's Raddest Race Car!

Of all the places we expected to find a Camaro race car, Finland wasn’t one of them! Northern Europe is about as far from the heartland of America where you’d expect to find the iconic mullet waving Freedom Machine, but it turns out the heavy metal (and milk consumption, unrelated) capital of the world is pretty partial to American muscle cars, with around 1,800 Camaros of various vintages currently registered in Finland.

Having not done a thorough investigation, I can only surmise that few of those 1,800 Camaros are as cool as this one - a 454 powered Camaro ice racer featuring twin tyres on all four corners.

For those unfamiliar with twin tyres, it was a short lived modification fad popular in the 80s. The brainchild of a Czech engineer, the technology appears to have been moderately popular two places in the world - inventor Jaroslav Juhan’s home of Czechoslovakia, and Australia, where Australian motorsport identity Colin Bond though his support behind Juhan’s JJD twin tyre system.

We’re drifting perilously far from the Camaro though, which too appears to have been pretty popular in the 80s judging by it’s crude wide body and Caltracs. These shots from Finnish photography Kari Ketonen snapped the ice skating Camaro at the Jäärata Toijala event - directly translated to an Ice Rink in the Finnish town of Toijala.

Astonishingly, the Camaro isn’t a dedicated ice racer and the owner thrashes the car in various forms of motorsport as the weather in his part of the world permits. As well as his exploits in the snow he’s also taken it drag racing and circuit racing. The 454 is no slouch and has been built top to bottom. It runs an 850 double pumper and is backed by a Tremec T56 six speed manual trans.