dog; an absolute necessity in that
neighborhood.
Schorr and Rosen got off to a not-
so-good start. Joel wrote a pointed
“letter to the editor” at Cars tak-
ing issue with an article. Marty vis-
ited Joel’s shop and the two guys
exchanged some New York “attitude”
and that was that. A short time later
they met again, only this time they hit
it off and have been friends ever since.
The relationship was beneficial for
both men. Cars magazine road tested
muscle cars from manufacturers, so
Schorr would send the cars to Rosen’s
shop for a good, sharp tune-up for
the road test by one of Cars crack test
drivers. Having access to Rosen’s shop
also made it possible for the magazine
to indulge in a few project cars. Schorr
would also give some ink to Rosen’s
various racing projects. It was a great
deal all around.
Phase II: Meet the
Baldwin-Motion
Fantastic Five
When Chevrolet released the
Camaro in the fall of 1966, there
were two performance versions: the
302 Z/28 and the SS 396/375. Chevy
needed to catch up and it was an
impressive start. The SS 396/375 big-
block option was nearly identical to
the 1965 396/425 L78 Corvette engine,
but not the magical “427.”
Rosen picked up on this right
away, but first, Joel wanted to cam-
paign a 427 Camaro in A/Modified
Production class that allowed for more
modifications than Super/Stock. So
when Rosen and his business part-
ner Jack Geiselman and John Mahler
(Baldwin Chevrolet’s Parts Manager)
got together in a meeting, their objec-
tive was to secure a sponsorship deal
with Baldwin Chevrolet. Also present
was Marty Schorr, who petitioned for
a 427 Camaro race car that Cars could
sponsor.
After a lot of back-and-forth talks,
and some convincing by Mahler
to Baldwin Chevrolet’s owner Ed
Simonin that a successful race car
would draw in customers, Rosen got
a bare-bones, inline-six, Granada
Gold 1967 Camaro. Once the car
arrived at Motion Performance, out
came the six and in went a modified
427 L88, plus everything else needed
for an A/Modified Production race
car. Quickly, the Baldwin Chevrolet
and Cars magazine-sponsored Motion
Performance Camaro was winning races
and setting records.
While all this was going on, Rosen
got the notion of Baldwin Chevrolet
offering “private label” 427 Camaros.
Years later, Joel confessed that he didn’t
have a grand plan; he just wanted to
keep his shop busy. So the team con-
sisted of Rosen performing the builds,Baldwin Chevrolet supplying the SS 396
Camaros, John Mahler making sure the
L88 engines and other important fac-
tory parts were available, and Schorr
would handle the marketing, branding
and advertising. Factory fresh, Motion-
prepared supercars with full GM warran-
ties could be financed through GMAC.
What a deal.
The very first Baldwin-Motion SS-427
supercar started life as a Deepwater Blue
Metallic SS 350 with a white nose stripe.VETTEWEB.COM 47Everything Corvette
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