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Certainly Yenko's success as a car tuner
is legendary, but then so is Joel Rosen's. "Mr. Motion" was the head
of Baldwin-Motion Performance in Long Island, New York, tuner of high
performance Chevrolets. The shop begin in the 50s as a modest repair garage,
until the 60s when Josen began a successful racing career. By this time he was
already super-tuning Chevelles, Chevy II's and Corvettes, but the Camaro in 1967
caught his eye as something special. Thus he convinced Dave Bean and Ed Simonin,
owners of of the Baldwin Chevrolet dealership, to sell his exclusive Camaro
Supercars. He too shoved beastly bigblocks in Camaros and modified them for
insane performance, but Rosen had a more wild side to his tuning. Thus was born
the first of many Baldwin-Motion Camaros, the Phase III. From 1967 to 1969,
instead of ordering the COPO 9561 package and adding a few goodies,
Baldwin-Motion ordered both iron 427s and L88 427s and rebuilt them in their own
shops, then bolted it under the hood. These 427s were more brutal than even Don
Yenko's, producing over 500 horsepower. These awesome bigblocks combined
with Baldwin-Motion's patented "Super-Bite Suspension" easily
backed up their claim that the Phase III was "guarenteed to turn 129
mph in 11.50 seconds or better with an M/P-approved driver..."
This nearly-unbeatable performance was backed up by an eye-catching styling
package. Baldwin-Motion Camaros were offered with a variety of fully-functional
cowl induction hoods patterned after 427 Corvettes. In addition they could be
had with a modified rear spoiler and even sidepipes to let everyone know when
you were coming down the street... from 4 blocks away. This combined with wild
hockey-stick shaped stripes running down the front fenders, as well as optional
stripes up the hood, roof and sides of the rear quarter-panels not only got
people's attention--it smacked them around and demanded to be noticed.
Like Don Yenko, Joel Rosen continued to make monster performance cars for many
years, but he's arguably remembered most for the Camaros, produced on into the
70s (as pictured at the top of the page), using 454 bigblock as well. And it's
no wonder... if you managed to get your hands on a Phase III, there was nothing
that could touch you, and everyone knew it.
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