Hood Scoops.

For maximum functionality the air cleaner needs to be sealed to the hood.

Look up pictures of the scoop airboxes for Roadrunners and Superbees and you'll see a series of flaps that opened underhood when the scoop was closed. I believe that shaker cars used a couple of drain hoses to keep it all dry.

Your parents Camaro would have had to had huge amounts of water coming in to flood an engine. Most likely it was a paper filter getting wet and starving the motor for air.

FWIW, the raised dual-snorkel scoop shown above is one of the better OEM scoop designs out there. It gets the air intake up above the slow-moving boundary-layer air. Myself, I'm walking the line between adding the Demon-style scoop shown above to my Dart for max effciency, or the twin-scoop setup that's appropriate for Darts, but isn't as good (too close to the hood.)