This SCCA Trans Am/GT1 Camaro Raced Three Countries Before Landing on Cars & Bids

A rare piece of grassroots road racing history is currently listed on Cars & Bids: a purpose-built Chevrolet Camaro constructed for SCCA Trans Am and GT1 competition, wearing a red, black, and white livery and sitting on a tubular chassis with a 358-cubic-inch V8 up front. The seller, who says his family has owned the car since 2008, is offering it as a bill-of-sale-only track car with a story that spans three countries and nearly a quarter century of wheel-to-wheel racing.

According to the listing, Trotnow Racing built the car in 2000 specifically for SCCA Trans Am and GT1 competition, campaigning it in the Chicago, Milwaukee, and San Francisco regions. Its most productive season reportedly came in 2006, when it notched five wins. Two years later, the current owner's family purchased the car and exported it to El Salvador, where it kept racing far from American short tracks.

The Camaro's résumé only grew from there. The seller states it won regional championships and set lap records at multiple circuits, including the Autódromo Los Volcanes in Guatemala, before its racing career finally wound down in 2022. It was shipped back to the United States in 2024, arriving without keys or a title. As with most dedicated racers of this type, it's sold on a bill of sale only and isn't eligible for street registration.

Underneath the composite bodywork sits the Trotnow Racing tubular chassis, riding on Penske coilovers with cockpit-adjustable sway bars and brake bias. Power comes from a 358-cubic-inch V8 reportedly built by CRD Engine Development and installed in 2020; the seller notes the engine has logged only about 20 minutes since its last rebuild. Output routes through a Weismann five-speed manual to a 9-inch rear axle, while Wilwood floating discs, a bladder-style fuel cell, and a Kirkey fixed-back seat round out the safety and performance equipment. It shares a silhouette with a fourth-generation Camaro but almost nothing else with a car you'd find on a dealer lot, a contrast worth remembering next to a clean, street-driven Camaro IROC-Z convertible that resurfaced after decades in hiding.

At the time of writing, bidding on Cars & Bids sits at $5,500 with several days left on the auction clock, and the seller has been actively answering questions in the comments about the car's history and paperwork. It's currently located in Sebring, Florida, a fitting home base for a car that's spent so much of its life at speed.

Because this Camaro is a title-less, purpose-built racer, it doesn't fit neatly into a price guide the way a numbers-matching street car would. Hagerty's valuation tools illustrate the gap: a 2000 Camaro Z/28 coupe in #3 (Good) condition is valued at roughly $12,200, and an SS coupe from the same model year comes in around $15,500. Those figures reflect largely stock, road-legal cars, not tube-frame racers with logbooks and lap records, which is exactly why cars like this one tend to sell on their story and equipment list rather than any published guide. It's a dynamic we've pointed out before when covering Hagerty Marketplace finds like a 1998 Corvette pace car convertible, where provenance did a lot of the heavy lifting on value.

Race-prepped muscle cars with real competition history don't come up for sale often, and this one's path through Trans Am and GT1 racing on two continents makes it an unusually well-traveled example. Enthusiasts who like their Camaros with a side of documented racing pedigree may also want to look back at this 1978 Chevrolet Camaro race car that turned up for sale in Michigan, or dig into the SCCA-flavored history behind this 1961 MG MGA speedster, for a sense of how differently purpose-built racers get valued compared to their showroom counterparts. Whoever wins this auction won't just be buying a Camaro; they'll be buying a piece of Trans Am and GT1 racing history that's already circled the globe once.