Old school, new ideas: Mike Dusold’s hillclimb Camaro

“Growing up, my dad always had early Ford Mustangs. So naturally, I wanted one of my own. A ’67 fastback was the ideal choice, but my high-school-job budget kept me from getting one of those,” Mike Dusold recently recalled.

Thankfully, he had a chance to acquire another contemporary which was cheaper on the used car market during the early nineties. A ’67 Chevrolet Camaro—one he spotted at a local car show—was soon his for the not-insignificant-to-a-teenager sum of $3700. Dusold, who started his career as an airbrusher shortly thereafter, had his artistic side satisfied with the sleek silhouette of a poster-material muscle car. 

His carefree, creative nature belies the hard-nosed tradesman in him—his dad and his grandfather, both welders, had instilled real value in the hands-on side of automobiles, and Dusold wanted to do more than just drive a beautiful machine down the boulevard on Sundays. He needed something to study, to understand, and to shape to his liking.  

It wasn’t long before a car that was, perhaps, not quite so classically beautiful captured his imagination. Amazed by the power turbochargers could make with relatively little effort, Dusold sold the Camaro to buy a Buick T-Type, with which he’d try to understand forced induction the best he could. 

But when sleek design from the 1960s once again pulled at his heartstrings a few years later, he decided he’d find a way to blend both his interests. In what was originally meant to be a show car, Dusold’s second Camaro, a 1969 model, changed shape as soon as he got a chance to watch a few friends compete at a Goodguys autocross. 

Making a turbocharged muscle car compete with the then-new Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions and Subaru Imprezas was going to be a chore, so he figured it wise to skip a step and sell the ’69 to buy parts for another ’67 Camaro he’d purchased—one which came fitted with a modern lump. Dusold had already swapped in a wet-sumped 427-cubic-inch V-8, a pair of responsive AGP turbos, a Tremec T56 transmission and a Detroit Speed Engineering suspension setup to bridge the gap between new and old. Despite that, those rally-wise machines proved too quick to catch.

“If you were in Street Mod class racing Evos on slicks, you had a steep hill to climb,” he recalled. 

Unfazed, Dusold took responsibility and acknowledged it was the experience divide keeping him from getting the most out of a capable modification package. By studying the veterans like a dedicated Jesuit and gluing his backside to the pilot’s seat, he gave himself a fighting chance as a driver.

There would be one modification besides that driver mod needed. Taking a cue from the top Corvette runners like Danny Popp, who would become a friend and mentor, he realized he’d have to start shifting the weight around. 

“A few guys then had said the era of the muscle car was over. My response was to build a muscle car that could beat up on modern cars and stay relevant,” Dusold said. 

To do that, he had to improve the center of gravity, the polar moment, and all the other essentials of roadholding. A lot to do, but at least the ruleset was relaxed back then. 

He set about designing his own tube chassis, and took a few cues from the C6 Corvette’s dual-wishbone suspension design. Pickup points were moved; and roll center height, camber gains, anti-dives, etc., were made more extreme as Dusold didn’t have to concern himself with the mass-production Corvette’s practical considerations. 

He also borrowed a Corvette C6’s transaxle to help distribute a little more weight over the driven wheels. The rest of the setup was simple: JRi coilovers, Wilwood disc brakes, and a set of 335-section tires—the fattest he could squeeze under the factory bodywork.

Back then, Dusold’s team was small: He and colleague Ryan Harris ran the show, but their performance stole the show—and attracted the ire of rival teams. Five years of campaigning this tube-framed Camaro paid off when they won the 2018 Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge, when his colleague was poached. 

“After our first Optima title, my main rival hired Harris to work at his shop, probably to try and destabilize my team, but I wasn’t going to let that happen!”

Dusold fortified his team with land speed racer Patty Nixon as crew chief, plus adding IMSA chassis engineer Scott Best. “Best advised us on geometry optimization and shock valving, and his values threw a lot of our competitors for a loop. When they saw how well our car started performing, one asked us, ‘What’d you change again?’

“Best was a wealth of information. Every weekend, his insights into chassis dynamics made the car noticeably better. It finally got the polish it needed,” Dusold recalled. 

Through constant, rigorous testing whenever possible, they managed to refine the car and beat the series-dominating Lancer Evolution. In fact, they won every event that year. “After that, the organizers added a few to the rule book, and they also asked us not to return the following season. That gave us a chance to aim a little higher,” Dusold said.

One stop along the Optima circuit was Pikes Peak International Raceway. There, Dusold met track owner Bob Boileau, who later invited Dusold and his team to watch the renowned hillclimb at the nearby mountain his track was named after. Towards the top of the 14,115-foot peak, Dusold was able to view the small world of motorsports in a different light. 

“What a sight! Watching the sun rise from Glen Cove was one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve seen. It’s just like stepping onto another planet.”

Ambiance aside, he wanted to know what a race car needs to function at altitude; in Texas, where Dusold lives, it’s not an issue. “It’s a challenge to tune the motor, as it’s starved for air and often running at its thermal limit. And the conditions are rigorous—brakes, suspension and drivetrain parts all take an unusual amount of abuse for how much driving is actually done.”

To get the car in hillclimbing shape, the setup which they’d used on autocrosses months earlier wasn’t changed extensively. In addition to a MoTeC ECU and a Sadev SCL924 sequential gearbox, Dusold updated the aero package to deal with greater speeds and thinner air. An APR wing, a homemade diffuser, a flat bottom, and a flat splitter were all he added.

Dusold hired Bob Boileau’s son Tommy to take the car up the mountain on its maiden climb. Following a promising start, the Camaro’s servo decoupled from its steering rack, leaving Tommy without power steering. Though shocked, he managed to avoid flying off a cliff, but he smacked a wall and brought their attempt to a halt.

Following this unfortunate foray, the team began overhauling the front end. “After we added electric power steering to limit the likelihood of a failure, we chopped off the front end and ditched some of the custom suspension pieces. We decided we needed a fixture-built chassis with laser-cut and bent parts—something replicable which we could fix in a hurry and potentially sell as a package down the road. At this point, the car became a test bed,” Dusold said. This video is a taste of the Camaro ascending.

Recognizing that the aerodynamics would need a serious overhaul if the team expected to succeed, he hired Verus Engineering to provide a computational fluid dynamics analysis—and CFD is something not often done to a car of this vintage. Unlike most of the work Verus has handled, Dusold’s Camaro placed a greater emphasis on the cosmetic impact that any aerodynamic elements might have. 

“Mike came to us wanting an aero analysis and a dual-element rear wing. Simple enough on paper, but we had to weigh performance against aesthetics. The question we asked was: How much performance are you willing to trade to keep it looking like what it is? That negotiation never really ends,” said Verus owner Eric Hagen. 

Despite the added complexities posed by a classic shape and the need to remain recognizably Camaro-like, even with the aero additions, they were determined to find solutions with the tools available. Whatever Verus came up with in CFD, Dusold would often give the piece an artistic revision with hand-sketched drawings. 

“There are places where the cosmetic constraints genuinely hurt performance, but what you get on the other side of that is a car that looks unlike anything else on a hill climb course. Unapologetically American, no excuses. That’s worth something too,” Hagen said. 

Dusold, Hagen said, “actually listens and implements things. When we flagged that the aero loads were going to demand more from the suspension, he listened and revisited the whole suspension setup. A lot of people nod and move on, but he doesn’t. We’ve tested more variations of things than we’d care to admit, but that’s how you actually find what works.” 

To help them make the most of the car’s aerodynamics, they brought on Pikes Peak veteran Robin Schute. “He liked our abilities with making his composite molds and as he was building his own Pikes Peak car,” Dusold said. “He was looking to get our insights on composite parts, and I wanted his insights as a fantastic engineer/driver who’s won PP four times.”

“Schute is very practical and matter-of-fact, and not afraid to tell us we were screwing it up. We’d run those things past Verus and see it in CFD and see progression over progression over progression,” Dusold said. 

With a set of better Alcon brakes and revised springs and dampers, the classic formula with a modern twist has proven itself capable on both autocrosses and hillclimbs. “Endless testing, that’s what did it,” Dusold said. “We’ve tripled the downforce in the last five years.”

“The rear wing we built is still on the car, which says something in this sport,” Hagen said. “The front splitter has gone through several iterations as Dusold keeps pushing the car. We developed the original, and we’re working out new concepts now.” 

On last year’s attempt, all was looking good until inclement weather, for the first time in decades, hit the mountain and cut that year’s proceedings short. “We were the fourth fastest overall until the top section, when Mother Nature gave us the shaft,” Dusold lamented.

Luck hasn’t always been on their side, but that hasn’t hindered the team’s performance. The five times at the mountain haven’t been for naught—Dusold, who just turned 51, is delighted with the way the car has turned out. For some, finishing results are only part of the draw; to craft something unique that blends beauty and technology in a striking way means just as much, if not more. Proven by the way the car has gathered a following online, it’s clear Dusold’s racing ethos isn’t just his own. 

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