Camaro big part of couple’s story

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This article was published 12/05/2023 (1277 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“If you take care of things they last” could very well be the motto of Peter and Heather Behrens, who were high school sweethearts in the late 1970s, and to this day still have the 1969 Chevrolet Camaro they took to their graduation.

The Camaro first rode into Peter’s life when he was 10 years old and growing up in Winnipeg.

“I was sitting on my buddy’s front step and this brand-new Camaro pulled up and it was my dad!” Behrens exclaimed. “And wow, I thought, that’s cool, very cool.”

There is an undeniable cool factor associated with the Camaro, first produced in 1966 as Chevrolet’s answer to Ford’s Mustang.

But it’s the 1969 Camaro that’s considered to the best Chevrolet of all time, with the 1970 Chevelle coming in second, voted on by fans who took part in Chevrolet’s 100-year celebration online poll.

When the Behrens family moved to Neepawa, the Camaro went with them, and Peter’s dream of having it one day never went away.

“We moved to a farm at Neepawa in ’72, so those were the first couple of times I drove the car. And then when I turned 16, I just sort of stole it from dad,” Behrens said as he laughed. “And I guess I never gave it back.

“And then I met Heather when we were both 17, and it was always ‘our car.’ We’re 63 now, so we’ve had it for the last 46 years or so.”

The Camaro has been part of the soundtrack of their lives, said Heather, who remembered trips to Winnipeg with the music blaring, not from the radio but from the car’s 8-track stereo system.

“So much fun,” she said. “It was Supertramp or Nazareth on the 8-track, and no talking — not just because the music was so loud, but because we were too busy with Spitz, our sunflower seeds,” Heather said as she laughed at the memory.

There were a few bumps in the road during and right after high school, not for the couple, but for the Camaro.

In shop class, “we really made a mess of the car,” said Peter. “We stripped the white, and repainted it red.”

And then a few years later during an ice storm, a tree fell on the car and the roof caved in, so it “just kind of sat” while Peter and Heather settled into married life and had a family of their own — three daughters, now 35, 38 and 40.

“Once the girls moved away, I dug the car out of the shop and totally redid it. Everything is new from end to end. I think there might be three bolts in it that I couldn’t change,” Peter said.

He even had an automotive rotisserie made by the welding department at Assiniboine Community College which he thanked with a donation, enabling him to rotate and flip the car to get access to all the hard-to-reach spots.

Today, the ’69 Camaro has a 327-cubic-inch V-8 engine that’s “built up a bit” and a four-speed automatic transmission changed from the original two-speed power glide. It has fewer than 100,000 miles on it, wheels that Peter said are “old school” with Cragar rims designed for muscle cars, and a licence plate that says, “1st CAR.”

There’s a new paint job, but the colour Dover White was on the Camaro the day it rolled off the assembly line.

And on the front fender is a little dent that Peter said he won’t ever fix because it’s a fond memory of being 14 years old and hitting a cow, with more damage to the vehicle than the bovine, he said.

There has never been any question as to where such a classic car would be stored at the Behrens’ place — it just had to be built according to Peter’s dream.

So now, a shop houses the Camaro with room for tools to maintain it, with additional space to socialize in one area they call the saloon from the 1860s, and another area that resembles a diner from the 1960s.

At one time, the couple lived in the shop while their house was being built, and Heather laughed as she remembered certain Christmas photos with the Camaro parked beside the dining room table, as if it was part of the family.

“You have to give a little to get a little.

“We’ve always worked together and try to create each other’s dreams and go from there,” Heather said as her voice broke with emotion.

“I’ve thought about selling the car,” Peter said. “But then I sit behind the wheel and start it up, and it just brings back all those great memories. It’s just the coolest car, and it’s our story — Heather’s and mine.”

» mmcdougall@brandonsun.com

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