[zoidberg]

Man, that's a sweet car. Hmmmm... Well, here's the deal on the car. It appears to be a 4-speed SS396. It has always been blue on black, but I discovered recently that it was originally dark green. I have known the car since I was 8, as I said. It had been passed around this area for years, finally being owned by a guy who was a Senior in high school when I was in junior high. When I bought my Road Runner, my senior year, my first race was against that Chevelle. The car was parked in 1997, and sold in 2002. The guy that bought it was going to restore it, until he let his girlfriend drive it, and she ran it off a bridge. It bent the hell out of the frame, and wrinkled the firewall. Now, by this point, I had gotten more interested in Chevys, and went to the yard it was in to look it over, partly out of curiosity, partly out of sadness. I had gotten attached to the old girl over the years. Anyway, I measured the fuel line, which ended up being a 3/8s. This made me think it might have been an L-78, not that it mattered, it was still too far gone to fix. But, I started doing some asking around about it, and here's where the COPO question comes in. I talked to a guy that owns a salvage yard just north of us, over the border in Nebraska, and he remembered the car, and how it ended up here. A local guy had bought the car in Topeka in '75 or '76. At the time, it had a blown 396 in it. Now, the yard owner tells me that Frank (the guy who owned the Chevelle) comes up and buys a 396 out of a junk SS396 he has sitting out there. So, I think, the original motor's long gone. I make an offhand remark about it being too bad about losing another SS396 this late in the game, you know, it made it this long, too bad it died. He looks at me and says, "That was no SS396, that was just a plain Chevelle." Apparently, he bought all the SS396 trim off the junk car, including the badges and interior pieces. Which is why I'm wondering what this car is. The rear end is currently in another Chevelle, but I had a chance to look at it yesterday. It is a 4.56:1, 12 bolt posi, coded KM. This confused me even more, because I thought all COPO rears are KQ. Like I said, I think the car is too far gone to save, regardless, but I'd just like to know what she was.