2002 Chevy Camaro SS

Twenty seconds after the explosion, Patrick Strobel came to. He saw sunlight through the dust in the air. He felt pain. Too much pain to comprehend. He heard ringing in his ears. He couldn't see out of his swollen right eye. He felt his right leg burning. Like it was on fire.His right leg was broken, and the right side of his body had been peppered with shrapnel. Slowly, he realized that the ruptured heater core of his battered Humvee was showering him with boiling coolant.

Strobel's convoy had just been hit by an IED in the Sunni Triangle. Insurgents had detonated three daisy-chained mortar rounds at once-crippling Strobel's Humvee, knocking the driver and Strobel unconscious. Killing the Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) gunner sitting behind Strobel on the right side of the vehicle.

It was August 2003. Just three days earlier, fortune seemed to have been on Strobel's side. With a borrowed satellite phone to his ear, the Army weapons technician had placed a hold on his dream car: a GMMG-prepared, Tom Henry Racing Camaro SS, one of only 32 built. Strobel had been a Camaro fan since owning a 1988 IROC, and wanted to buy a fourth-gen Camaro.

The car was the last TH-SS left in Tom Henry's Bakerstown, Pennsylvania, showroom. When Strobel called, the car was already on a trailer, bound for a show where Henry intended to sell it. The TH-SS was a limited-edition car produced by GMMG, which also produced special Camaros for enthusiast Chevrolet dealers like Berger and Dale Earnhardt. The Marietta, Georgia, company modified this 2002 model's LS1 to produce 380 hp and 400 lb-ft of torque with the help of a carbon-fiber airlid, ported manifolds, chambered exhaust, a high-flow MAF sensor housing, and a reprogrammed engine computer.

Strobel knew he wouldn't see the car for another six to eight months, but he did know that it would be his. When Tom Henry told Scott Settlemire, GM's Camaro brand manager at the time, about the unique circumstances surrounding Strobel's purchase of the car, Settlemire sent Strobel an e-mail, thanking him for his service and sending him detailed information about the manufacture of the car, including the dates and times when it went through certain stages of the plant and when certain components were installed.

Now Strobel's fortunes had changed. He found himself on a stretcher being pumped full of morphine as medics tried to stabilize him. He spent the next six weeks recovering-first in Baghdad, then in Germany, and then at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. During this time, Strobel underwent more than a dozen surgical procedures.

While in his hospital bed at Walter Reed, he got a call from Tom Henry. "I heard what happened, Patrick," he said, "and if you want out of the deal, I've got no problem with that."

"I'm going to be fine," Strobel told Henry. "If anything, I want this car even more than I did before."

Meanwhile, the Camaro community, both online and at General Motors, had learned of Strobel's injuries in the line of fire. "These guys embraced my story and my situation," Strobel said, adding that an entire page on the Chirpthird.com message board had been dedicated to wishing him well. "It reinforced my desire to have the Camaro and be a part of this community, and it made me glad that I chose this car."

After being released from Walter Reed, Strobel was invited by an American Legion post in Pennsylvania to lay a wreath at a September 11th ceremony. Unexpectedly, local news crews showed up and the event even turned into a parade of sorts. "Once I had my 15 minutes of fame," Strobel said, "I called Tom Henry to tell him I was coming down to the dealership and that I would like to drive the car."

At the time Strobel was wearing a hearing aid and a brace on his injured right hand. The excitement he felt about seeing the car was tempered by anxiety over whether he was going to be able to drive, or even hear, his new car.