[deuce-less]

Before She Was the Blue Mule

Donald Riley
August 2008



I was recently visited by an old love, my ‘69 COPO Camaro, purchased when I first got my driver’s license back in 1974.

She’s had several incarnations since we last were together, lives that I’ve just now been discovering as she returned in the most unexpected way.

But before I get into her return, let me talk about our days together in the dazed and confused 70s.

After having my driver’s license for a month, I suddenly found myself behind the wheel of a monster, a most beautiful monster, but nevertheless, a monster! She was rated at 435 HP, but of course in those days they underrated the horsepower for insurance reasons so the number was actually much higher.

My Mother didn’t want me to own such a car, The neighbors were already calling up yelling at her because of the way I was using the local streets as a race track in my ‘57 Studebaker Hawk… an additional 250 HP in the COPO would certainly be a deadly mix in the hands of an adrenaline thirsty teenage boy.

My Studebaker wasn’t running when I saw the ad for the Camaro. I wanted to borrow my Mother’s car to go look at it, but she wouldn’t allow me, so I bought an old Dodge that someone was selling down the street for $25 to go look at the Camaro.

When I first saw the Camaro it was love at first sight, that Lemans Blue was like the color of the Heavens above, or at least the waters of Waikiki. When I started her up she roared, the only exhaust system was the headers and glasspacks, the sound was pure power!

I have to admit that as a 17 year old with little experience behind the wheel, I was a little nervous about driving it the first time, my left leg was shaking so much as I pushed in the clutch I could hardly put it into first gear. Once I did get rolling though, it was amazing! The experience of driving this car could only be measured by G-Force as it threw me back against the seat each time I entered the next gear.

There was no doubt this car was going to be mine, it was my hard-earned money from all those cold winter mornings delivering the local newspaper and I had the cash on me, $1600… Mothers just don’t understand these things.



I had my COPO from the end of my junior year in high school until the summer after graduation, the perfect time for a 17 year old boy to own such a car. This was the kind of car that would find me looking out from my living room window at it sitting in the driveway long after the newness wore off… and the kind of car that everyone else looked at too, including the girls… and the cops.

I was too shy in those days to fully use such a “chick magnet” to its full advantage, but my car was an accomplice in the loss of my virginity. For the most part it was me and my buddies who rode around in this car though, often very intoxicated as only someone from the 1970s would understand. It was really quite amazing that this car ever survived, or that I survived, as I’d take it out on the highway cruising at what seemed to be the speed of light.

The speedometer only read up to 120 mph so I could only guess how fast I was going, but it was well beyond the capabilities of the speedometer. Of course a car built for acceleration was not meant to cruise at such speeds, but I didn’t know that. All that I did know was that it was so cool going so fast… the cars doing 70mph looked like they were standing still and when I dropped it back down to 70 I didn’t even feel like I was moving.

There was a problem with this though, just a small matter, I blew the engine on one of these runs. In those days no one knew the value of a COPO, certainly not me at that time, so I went to the junkyard and bought another engine, a 396/375. But after a weekend in my front yard with a rented engine hoist and hooking the new motor up, to my disappointment it wouldn’t start. The junkyard had sold me a seized up engine, all that work down the drain.

I was very frustrated at this point, so I dropped the 427 back in and had my friend rebuild it. Talk about bad luck being good luck, if that 396 would have started up, the 427 would have been lost forever in some junkyard and now this car would only be worth a small fraction of what it is worth today.

As I was to find out 33 years later, this COPO has certainly been blessed, like a cat with 9 lives. It survived not only a senior year with a crazy 17 year old boy, but again as the Blue Mule, a stripped down race car, and then rescued by the guy who bought it from me in 1975, Dan Palchanes and now being restored to perfection by its new owner Alan Forman.

How strange the way that my COPO returned to me though. I was actually visiting an old friend from high school, hanging out in the basement of his house that he’s lived in since we were kids, his drum set from the 1970s still sitting in the same spot. We were reminiscing about the old days, him telling me how frightened he was in the backseat as I used to race that car down I-287 with bald tires, my other friend in the front begging me to go faster.



As we were talking, my cell phone rang. It was my Mother telling me that the guy who bought my car back in 1975 just called her all these years later and wanted to talk to me, a guy I had only met one time. He, Dan, told me of the car’s long journey and his journey to find the car again, and then finding me by looking through an old newspaper ad for the car. He put me through to Alan, the current owner and Alan sent me pictures of the Camaro as it was being restored.

Suddenly time lost all meaning as I recalled through my senses the memories. I remembered things like what it felt like to put my hand on the seam of the black vinyl roof as I washed and waxed it, or my right hand on the radio controls tuning in to Lynyrd Skynyrd or Led Zeppelin.

What a great family reunion! I miss my old girlfriend, but she is in good hands and I am so happy to know that she is alive and well, now being restored to her original beauty, knowing that time is of the mind and we are all Eternal.

Long live the Blue Mule!




Some other memories of my COPO Camaro:

* That 427 offered the warmest hood in the neighborhood. Not only was it a chick magnet, it was a cat magnet! I could never keep the car clean, every morning I would go outside and find cat footprints all over the hood. 

* My one friend who lived about a mile and a half away told me that he always knew when to put his coat on when he was waiting for me to pick him up, he could hear me start up the car and go through the gears as I drove to his house. I know the woman next door hated when I started my car up every morning to go to school, it was loud!

* One time after a late night of partying I was driving home when I saw a police car out of the corner of my eye, parked on the side of a building with his lights off. From my rearview mirror I saw his lights go on and without thinking I stepped on the gas and took off! I wasn’t far from my house and I was sure I could outrun him, and I did. As I approached the last corner before my house I could still see the red and blue lights behind me. I raced into my driveway where some large trees partially hid me, I killed my lights and the engine and I sat there in the dark as the cop came around the corner. Our house was at an intersection, the cop slowed down to a stop, he didn’t know which way I had gone. He looked at the road that continued straight and he looked at the road to the right, but he didn’t see me behind the trees to the left. I laughed as he slowly pulled away, what a great triumph for a 17 year old kid, and what a great story to tell my friends the next day.

* Years later I was going out with a girl who grew up in my neighborhood, but was 12 years younger than me. One day I was talking to her about my Camaro and how I used to use the street behind her house as a drag strip. Suddenly she looked at me in shock and anger and said, “that was you?! I hated you when I was a little girl! I was afraid to go out in my yard because of that loud, blue car racing down the street all the time!” I could only laugh, and then she laughed with me.