1967 Chevy Camaro SS 350 Rally Sport with top down; the car was restored by Tommy Ouimette, of North Kingstown.

The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

WARWICK In the end it all worked out, but it was a long hard trip for Joe Rochira and his 1967 Chevrolet Camaro convertible.

It started back in 1981 when his father bought it for $1,000 with the idea that the two of them would restore it. It ended just a week or so ago when a new roof and exhaust system were finally installed — with a radio still to come.

“I could not be happier with the result,” he said in a recent interview in the Potowomut neighborhood of Warwick where he lives. “And I know my father would be proud.”

The car, in a new coat of original Nantucket Blue with a black bumble bee stripe across its nose and hideaway headlights, is not only a looker but a real piece of history.

General Motors rolled out the Chevrolet Camaro “pony car” in the fall of 1966 – the 1967 model year – in response to the success of Ford’s Mustang, which had been introduced in 1964. From the start it was a success on the track – it was the official pace car for the 1967 Indianapolis 500 and won the Trans-Am championship the following year – and in the showroom, with some 220,000 selling in its debut year. Overall, Chevrolet produced four versions before the last one in 2002, and a new Camaro is expected in 2009.

Rochira’s first-year Camaro is the Super Sport model with the small-block Chevrolet 350 cubic inch engine. It also has the Rally Sport package, which includes the SS 350 badge on the grille, hideaway headlights and a deluxe interior.

The license plate is an appropriate — SSRS 67.

Rochira, 44, who is a tax accountant with BankAmerica, said his father always had an old car that he worked on in his spare time and he would help him.

“We talked about finding a car of our own to work on,” he said. However, the Camaro turned out to be more than they could handle.

It was cosmetically appealing but riddled with rot,” he said. “When you lifted the carpets, there were gaping holes in the floor.”

Rochira’s father was a chef at Brown University and used to work at a camp in New Hampshire in the summer. He said his father found someone whose son said he could work on the car.

“So we formed a plan to drive it up and have it restored over the winter and pick it up the following summer,” he said. He drove it up to New Hampshire — going through three quarts of oil and blowing a tire in the process and his father gave the mechanic $500 to buy a donor car for parts.

But the project suffered its first setback when Rochira’s father died unexpectedly in December of that year. They had been close — Rochira is the youngest of three children — and it was a blow.

Then he found out that the mechanic had not only done nothing to the car, but had used it for parts for a car he had bought for himself with the $500.

“He was a real jerk,” he said. “(The car) was sitting in field and missing the radiator and hood hinges. Plus the roof had been leaking all winter.”

“He was 20 years old and his father apologized, but I was devastated,” he said. “Not only did I lose my father but this was a father-and-son project.”

Rochira said he rescued his car, bringing it back to his house and working on it all winter, stripping it down until he had a completely disassembled Camaro stored in a loft apartment above his garage.

And there it stayed until he graduated from Bryant University and decided to go to work again. He put the car back together, rebuilt the engine, had some new body and floor panels put in and he repainted it.

“It was a very good amateur restoration,” he said, adding that he drove it around for years but lost interest and it sat in his garage for 15 years.

“I lost interest and thought about selling it,” he said. “But I had an inner vision that I’d regret it someday.”

In 2005, he said, he met Tommy Ouimette, of North Kingstown, who restores cars.

“He was highly recommended,” said Rochira. “I had done a decent amateur restoration. Now it needed a proper restoration by someone who knew what he was doing.”

He dropped the car off in December 2005. “I returned a couple of weeks later and the car was completely disassembled,” he said.

He said Ouimette replaced most of the panels, including the entire floor panel, “toe-boards to trunk.”

“He had to brace the car with welded bars across the door openings so it would not fold in two when the floor panel was gone,” he said, adding, “Tommy is a fanatic, he goes the extra mile. It was such a relief after the other man.”

Overall, the restoration took two years, including the rebuilding of the engine by Russ Johnson’s Engine Service in Warwick.

“Russ is a friend of mine, and we assembled the car together so I would have a part in the restoration, although I probably just got in the way,” he said.

The engine was then taken over to Ouimette’s shop and dropped in.

“It’s a restomod,” Rochira said, referring to a restoration that includes many modern replacement parts and a fair amount of tweaking. “It’s restored to its original condition but includes modern technology for safety and performance.”

Thus the car has an electronic ignition, 4-wheel disc brakes instead of the original drum brakes, front and rear sway bars for handling and a sub-frame subconnector because there is no roof.

“The car can flex a little,” he said.

Interestingly, the seat belts are original, being part of the deluxe Rally Sport package, he said.

The engine has been tweaked, with high-flow performance heads and roller cams, to “probably 425 horsepower,” he said.

“I think the truck came out pretty good, too,” he said, showing off the flecked-blue paint job and noting the two “cocktail shakers” in the corners. Chevrolet placed the weighted cylinders in all four corners to distribute the weight of the car evenly and dampen the vibration due to the lack of roof.

Rochira got the car back last November. He said restored 1967 Camaros run $35,000 to $50,000 and thinks his is worth “a strong $40,000,” adding that it cost $3,000 brand new and he is into his for about $25,000.

But given the emotional roller coaster the car has taken him on, it is hard to imagine him selling it.

“It’s been nearly 27 years since I first set eyes on car and I sure am glad I never sold it,” he said.

You can see a slideshow of photos at projocars.com

pelsworth@projo.com