Here’s the improbable story of a 1974 Baldwin-Motion Phase III Camaro that has lived its entire life in Tehran, Iran. The car was built new by Joel Rosen and the guys at Motion Performance for a wealthy automotive enthusiast. The car survived the 1979 revolution and subsequent lockdown the country has been in seemingly ever since. It is now being restored by a group that is preserving the car collection of the late-Shah.
The car has lived an interesting life for sure and we’d venture to guess that it was and still may be the most bad ass street machine in Iran (and yes, we think it is just as odd to type that as it was for you to read it). The Phase III was a heavy breathing package which was based around a 454ci, 9:1 compression big block that wore ZL/X open chamber heads, an Edelbrock intake manifold, an 850-cfm Holley carb, and large diameter headers.
It got road tested in New York and then sent directly to Iran, where it has lived ever since. We got tipped off to the car’s cool story by pal of BangShift.com, Martyn Schorr. If his name is familiar to you than you’ve probably seen his byline in magazines and maybe you’ve read one of his books. Most recently he penned the definitive Motion-Performance book, Motion Performance: Tales of a Muscle Car Builder.
Click Here to get the rest of this tale as Marty has the rest of the Camaro story and a bunch of great photos of the car prowling the streets of Tehran over at CarGuyChronicles.com.
