The First Generation Camaro

Over the years there have been a lot of different styles of the camaro, but none are a appealing as the first generation, and of the first generation the 1969 model year is my favorite, so many things were done the that particular year of camaro.
It was the height of the muscle car wars of the 1960's, we had all kinds of dealers competing to build the best, and fastest camaro ever, I could list them all day long, but we'll stick to the ones that people know, like Yenko Chevrolet, Baldwin Chevrolet, Berger Chevrolet, and Fred Gibb Chevrolet; these dealers far and away did the most for the camaro.

First we'll begin with Fred Gibb, this Chevrolet dealer had the great idea to push the ZL1 camaro, and hired Dick Harrell to drive it, who did a spectacular job, first let's talk a little about the car, the ZL1 camaro was truly an engineering feat for the 1960's, it came from the factory with an all aluminum 427 cid engine that pushed close to 721 HP.

The car in total didn't weigh any more then a small block car, but boasted the power and torque of a big block, which obviously helped this car to do amazing things, it's designation from the factory was "COPO" 9560, the car was actually rated at 430 HP from the factory, a huge underrating, Dick Herrell drove the car to an amazing 10.05 in the 1/4 mile.

This 1/4 mile time was of course with the headers uncorked, and a set of racing slicks on the cat, but in full street dress the car would pull 10.30 in the 1/4 mile, with a good driver, this camaro looked as plain Jane as a camaro can look, the only tell tale sign was the cowl induction hood.
Now for the Baldwin Motion camaro, for this feat two companies joined forces, Baldwin Chevrolet, and Motion Performance, and a miracle they performed, the Baldwin-Motion camaro started life as a regular camaro, and got transformed by two automotive geniuses.

Motion had put a guarantee on the car to run an 11.5 quarter mile all day long, and it did, now if I remember correctly the car was rated at 425 HP, this was untrue, the actual HP to push a 3650 pound car through the 1/4 mile in 11.5 seconds would have been about 483.3 rwh, and 604 HP at the flywheel..
They had a 12 bolt rear end, and usually came with a 4.10:1 gear set, although the 3.73:1 was available also, and a lot more street able of a gear set, but not as zippy in the 1/4 mile, a true motion phase III camaro will command about a $400,000 price tag today, but in the 1960's about $4,800.00.
This was not your normal camaro, you'd better be prepared to drive, and ready to give her the respect that she deserved, it was a fun ride for those who could handle it.

Now for a car that I'm sure you've all heard of, the sYc or "Super Yenko Camaro", this car was a very special camaro, Don Yenko of Yenko Chevroelt would order a sports car conversion off of the central office production order list, or a "COPO" car, in this case it was COPO 9737.

The 9737 sorts car conversion came with some goodies, suspension, and rally wheels, and then toped that off with the COPO 9561, which provided the L72 427 CID 425 HP engine, after Don got the cars at his dealership he would then add a graphics kit that included an arrow on the cowl hood, with two stripes moving back toward the passenger compartment of the car, he then added a big golf club stripe, that started at the front fender and went all the way to the back of the quarter panel on each side of the car, it ended with a little triangle on each end of the spoiler.
Don also added a gauge package, and a few other small things, and this created the Super Yenko Camaro, whan Don put Dickk Harrell behind the wheel of this car would would perform amazing feats at the race track, the Yenko Camaro was good for a 12.59 @ 108 MPH in the ¼ mile, on stock rubber, with the headers corked, I have been unable to locate the times that the car ran with the headers open, and a set of wrinkle walls on the car, but you can bet on around 12.30 @ 115 MPH, no slouch for a street car huh.

Most of these cars came with a Muncie M21 or M22 rock crusher transmission, and if you ever wondered how the rock crusher got it's name, supposedly they dropped diamonds in to the gear box, and before it chewed the gears, the rocks were crushed to powder.
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