(Photos: RM Sotheby’s) I’m an avowed fan of the 1974-77 form of the Chevrolet Camaro. In general, second-gen Camaros are a score. Everybody loves a split-bumper car, the Vega-style early form a close runner up, and there is something disco-chic about the later, rubber bumper cars, especially the Rally Sport, Z28, and Yenko Turbo Z. But for me, it’s got to be in the middle. You have the early interior, the bigger back window starting in 1975, and a look that many others just don’t vibe with. A Baldwin-Motion Phase III tribute, an early IROC Camaro build, or the over-the-top ridiculous stinkbug street machine would all rule, and that’s before you get into handling, horsepower or whatever else you can do to an F-body.

Or…you can be like Chevrolet and let somebody else take a swipe at the styling. For years, the 1974-77 models were the ones to avoid. The catalytic converter had neutered the small-block, the Z28 bowed out after 1974 and didn’t come back until halfway through 1977, and the bumpers were neither the smaller early forms nor the sleek urethane-covered versions on the later. Instead, they were the big, brutal chromed railroad ties that could take a hit from a locomotive with ease. So how do you improve on the looks? Send it to Italy seemed to be everybody’s go-to answer. Chevrolet shipped a 1976 Camaro over to Pietro Frua, the man who designed the Maserati Quattroporte, the Fiat 1100C Spider, the Maserati Kyalami, the AC 428, the Monteverdi High Speed 375S, and probably most famously, the Volvo P1800, and told him to have at it.

The end result: a nose that is blacked out and resembles a Lancia Montecarlo with two extra headlights, a roofline that tunnels to the tail of the car in a manner that would become quite popular in just a few years’ time from Japanese manufacturers, and a tail pan composed of Pontiac Firebird taillights. The Minilite-style wheels and the hatched roof finish off most of the modifications. Squint a little bit on the body, especially around the curve of the lower body panels and around the door glass frames, and you’ll see remnants of the F-car’s original shape. The interior is more-or-less untouched, and underhood is certainly stock, twenty miles of vacuum hose and all.

Does it work? the “Europo Hurst” looks like a Grand Theft Auto video-game car, where you see two models mashed into one vehicle so as to not pay licensing fees. But a four-speed Italian-bodied F-body has potential. Unfortunately, being as only one car was produced, this one will never be cut up. Frua was in his sixties and was winding down, finding that one-off builds and quickly built prototypes were no longer in demand, and he passed on in 1983, not long after he had been diagnosed with cancer. To the elite who play in these circles, building the 350 underhood to crank out a respectable horsepower range, stuffing some vintage HSE suspension pieces from the time period into the suspension and other easily-hidden, carefully controlled modifications would be akin to altering the Mona Lisa to show Da Vinci’s posed lady smoking a joint.

But we can dream, can’t we?

RM Sotheby’s Auction: 1976 Chevrolet Camaro “Europo Hurst” by Frua