Over the years, we’ve seen hundreds of father-and-son projects. Readers might rightfully be skeptical about the degree to which some of these younger team members do the heavy lifting. A father’s love for his offspring knows no bounds, so it comes as no surprise that in many cases, the son or daughter is along for a ride on easy street. Nepotism does exist in hot rodding, but a few pointed questions usually weed those cases out after a minute or two. Make no mistake, in the case of Russell and Cavan Cameron of Noblesville, Indiana, hot-rodding is a true team effort with the added dimension of scholastic achievement, and as you’ll discover here, that’s not hyperbole.
Luck had young Cavan Cameron growing up at ground zero. His father, Russell, is now retired, but upon Cavan’s birth, he was a crew chief and team owner in the world of IndyCar racing (Russell has worked for such big-name teams as Patrick Racing, Galles Racing, Target Chip Ganassi Racing, and PacWest Racing). This provided young Cavan a front-row seat to one of the world’s most demanding forms of motorsport, so when he reached the tender age of 15, he made the pronouncement that he wanted in as well. “My dad introduced me to cars at a very young age” says 20-year-old Cavan. “We kept on doing car stuff, and one day in middle school I said to my dad, ‘Hey, I’ve been watching for a while, and I really want to do a car project.’ My dad was looking through Craigslist and eBay, and we settled on a ’72 Nova. We found a shell and stripped it. We built it over a year and a half into a restomod. It’s got all the goodies.” And as they say, we’re off to the races.
That Nova restomod might’ve sufficed for most father-and-son projects, but this was a family living on a whole other
