MERIDIAN — Combining the classic beauty of Rita Hayworth and push-you-back-in-your-seat American muscle crafted in Van Nuys, Calif., Dave Landis' 1968 Chevrolet Camaro RS is a street machine with the soul of a streamlined rocket.

A project he started 21 years ago, Landis' Camaro was just another in a the long line of hot rods he has owned, but grew into something more.

“The other cars I had, I never did a complete paint job like I did for this one. I never did the interior, never hunted for parts like I did for this one,” Landis said.

“You find the right one and know it's just the way it's supposed to be.”

Powered by a 427-cubic-inch Chevrolet engine bored 0.125 over, the car's dash resembles a cockpit, with gauges measuring everything from amperes to oil pressure.

A tachometer atop the steering wheel column slightly obscures the speedometer, but that's not an issue since Landis claims he doesn't really test the former drag-racing car's limits.

“I know it goes. It scares me to death,” he joked.

“I wait all year to drive this. It's my only vice. I don't smoke, drink or gamble.”

Landis, who serves as vice president of the Butler hot rod group the Rodfathers, said he participates in the Rodfathers' 13 car cruises each year, with the biggest being Butler's Cruise-a-Palooza, but doesn't go to car shows.

“It gets about 400 miles per year on it if I'm lucky,” he said of the Camaro.

But the Lower Burrell native didn't always have designs on being a gear head.

“It's my dad's fault,” he said.

Landis' father was chief mechanic for Gulf Research and Development racer Don Yenko, based in Harmarville, for 42 years.

“I had it in me, but they didn't want me to get in the car business at all,” he said.

In fact, his first car was not a hot road, but a 1955 Studebaker coupe.

After graduating from Lower Burrell High School in 1966, Landis attended Oliver Stockton College in Missouri, graduating with a degree in psychology and sociology in 1970.

While in Missouri, Landis met and married Carol, his wife of 42 years. The couple have a son and a granddaughter, with another grandchild on the way.

While pursuing his master's degree at the University of Illinois afterward, Landis was drawn back to Pennsylvania by a death in the family.

However, his destiny already had caught up with him, as he worked in an automotive body shop to support himself during college.

“I had a passion for 1957 Chevrolets. I had three of them when I lived in Illinois,” Landis said.

“There's not blood in me; It's motor oil. It runs through your veins. The noisier, the better.”

So it was with that Landis gravitated toward the automotive industry, retiring in April after 35 years of work in the service departments of four different dealerships.

During that time, he racked up quite a resume of cars himself.

“Counting this car, I've probably had about 75 hot rods that I've bought and done something to,” Landis said.

“You try to get your money out of it, plus half. That way, you can get something better each time.”

Among those vehicles were a 1964 Chevrolet Nova and a 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle, as well as Landis' only foray into Oldsmobiles, a 1977 Cutlass.Landis said his wife always was supportive of his hobby/obsession, but put her foot down in the early 1980s, telling him he had to build the family a house before he built another car.Not one to slack on any project, Landis completed work on his split-level home along Miller Street in 1983, doing the job in just 18 months with help from his father, father-in-law and a bricklayer friend.Just a few years later, while working at Wright Pontiac in Wexford, Landis met the car that would end, or at least slow down, his journey to hot rod nirvana.One day in 1990, Landis drove to Mars to look at a 1932 Ford coupe he was considering buying, but noticed an orange 1968 Camaro up on jack stands.“I had to talk him into it. He was selling the Ford so he could work on the Camaro,” Landis said.“He made the mistake of telling me what he would take for (the Camaro).”After settling on a price of $7,500, Landis sold his Oldsmobile to a coworker and bought the Camaro.It had no wheel houses (inside engine compartment), the interior was shredded, the floor and trunk soft from rust and the motor barely ran.After he got the engine running, Landis' first order of business was to replace the white racing stripes, which he said “did nothing for the car,” with black ones.From there, it was one improvement after another.Landis stripped the hard top from the vehicle and put on a black vinyl roof to further enhance the visual appeal of a car that came from the factory painted “Champagne Metallic. It didn't look very mean.”Landis added a custom-made hood scoop to force air into the Camaro's tall-stack, dual 660 Holley carburetors and switched out the drag racing wheels for American Racing rims that didn't scrape his newly installed rear disc brakes.He said having the drum brakes on the car's rear tires “felt like you were throwing an anchor out there to slow down.”Finally, in late 1991, the car was stripped to bare metal for a paint job by Paul Stamp of Cabot.“I wanted Chevy emblems on it, but I wanted something different, too,” Landis said.Stamp incorporated “ghost emblems,” translucent logos that seem to float within the paint, inside the car's stripingSince 1991, most of Landis' additions have been minor: a pair of windshields to replace those cracked by the torque produced by the Camaro's engine, an extra strip of molding at the bottom of the doors to protect the paint from debris tossed up by the car's 15-inch rear tires, and an unplanned glass etching on the triangle windows behind the doors.Some one tried to steal Landis' prize at the Good Guys Nationals in Columbus in 2002, scratching the window in their attempt, so he had the windows etched with the Rat Fink hot rod character to match the car's nickname, Rat Poison.“They had the locks and the ignition out of it, but they couldn't start it,” Landis said.The end result of his efforts is one Landis won't let be stolen or sell.“It's like one of the family,” he said.“(You realize) when you fall asleep under it while you're trying to figure something out.”However, Rat Poison may not be his last project.Lurking under lawn chairs and holiday decorations in the back of his garage sits an unfinished 1968 Chevelle SS: bought from Texas, no rust, matching VIN numbers, waiting to be another hot rod to meet Landis' expertise.