My point is getting a bit lost here; you have to read the books to get a sense of what went on back then. Chevrolet did not freely dispense cars and parts to racers in the good 'ol days. Even Penske had his problems with them. After they won the '69 Championship, he sold the Camaros and signed a contract with AMC to race Javelins in the T/A. And he owned a Chevrolet dealership.

Darrell, I was thinking the exact same thoughts reading through this thread. Glad you commented about that. I remember the local racer mentioned said Grumpy helped get him his car in record time. Did he say he got it discounted pretty good? I was thinking he said he did but can’t remember.

I know he did say Grumpy had loads of heads and blocks (I think, but I know he at least said heads) dropped off at his shop from GM. They did hook him up pretty good, according to this guy.

I wasn’t saying Jenkins gave him the car. The program or contact just gave them the car at cost pricing I believe.

Correct Kasey. It was discounted but not 100% certain but I thought he said at cost. Might have to get Nuge to talk with him again. I wish I’d recorded the conversation but again didn’t think about it.

The Jenkins cars changed a lot race to race if you look at the pictures. Look for emblems, parking lights, side lights (68) , grills - sometimes they were there , sometimes not there or modified. Fiberglass fenders and front parts were allowed in some classes.
The cars were changed for the rules for NHRA, AHRA, Match race, Modified production , SS/C Super Stock , Pro Stock, Gasser etc.

Here is a photo of the 67 with the RS grill , no fender emblems, but mostly this car was run with standard grill and 396 fender emblems.

I find it interesting they went the extra effort to black out the lower rocker for RS but no chrome.

Chevrolet did give out parts to some racers. Maybe not as directly as Ford and Mopar but it did happen. Fred Gibb did get a cross ram for Little Hoss and this was before he became more high profile with the 396 Chevy IIs and ZL-1s. Ken Deckman, a Pacific NW Trans-Am racer had a cross ram show up on his door step even though he already had one and didn't request it. I believe he got an extra GM fiberglass cross ram hood under similar circumstances. If a local race was coming up you might get a little surprise in the mail. Chevy also had stuff like experimental rear axle assemblies that they would send out for people like Penske to use. Normally they would want something like that returned so they could tear it apart after the race to look at wear characteristics or, in the case of failure, to see why it failed. One of these axles from the Penske Camaro that won Sebring in 1968 stayed with the car and was never returned. It may have had to do with the fact that Penske sold the car shortly after that race and the car went to Canada. Stamped numbers found on the axle housing decades later were confirmed against internal GM records to correlate to a Chevy Engineering test assembly. Bottomline, I'm sure guys like Jenkins got stuff given to them under the guise of testing product in heavy-duty, real-life situations but it wasn't anywhere near what the other car companies did.

The #1 recipient of complimentary parts was undoubtedly Smokey Yunick, dating back to the '50s. In addition, he was paid [poorly] for development work he did for them. By the early '90s, he had so much stuff he auctioned most of it. That's where 1970 Camaro N500001 came from and the infamous Hemi 302 heads.

A word or so about the heads. I see foolish claims of 600 hp; complete nonsense. He inherited the project when Chevy Engineering couldn't make power with them. After several months of development, they maxed out at 450 hp according to an interview with him in the August 1996 issue of Super Chevy magazine. That was about 10% less than a production-based 302 so the project was scrapped.

450HP? How is that 10% less than a 290HP 302?

The production based cross-ram 302 racing engines [block, heads] as built by Yunick were 485-500 hp.

Thanks for clarifying.