[deuce-less]

The birth of Big Blue


It was August 6, 1969 and I was in El Toro Marine base in Anaheim, California. I had just returned home from 3 consecutive tours in the Southeast Asian war games and was about to be discharged. During the 30 months I’d spent in theater I’d managed to save a tidy little sum of cash and it was burning a hole in my pocket. I went overseas in April of 1967, just before the muscle car boom hit and I’d come home right in the middle of it. I wanted my little piece of Chevy heaven.

I got discharged and headed back to my mother’s home in Wood-Ridge, NJ to get reacclimated to civilian life. During our mustering out briefing we had been cautioned not to wear our uniforms during our trip home. The political climate had changed dramatically while I was gone and military personnel weren’t looked upon too fondly. It was a brave new world indeed. August 7th was a Thursday, mid week, and the airport was pretty empty. I’d chosen to wear my uniform to get the heavy airfare discount – I wanted to save as much of my cash as possible to buy my dream car. I’d read every muscle car magazine I could get my hands on while in Vietnam and I’d narrowed my choice down to either a Camaro or a ‘Vette.

Upon returning home I spent a day with my family and on Saturday I headed to Malcolm Konner – a Chevy dealership in Paramus, NJ. Malcolm Konner was known for having a large selection of ‘vettes and other muscle cars. I walked the lot in awe. They had more corvettes than I’d ever seen before and a lot of cars that I’d never even heard of before I left – Novas, Chevelles, you name it.

Then I went into the showroom. On the floor was a very plain looking Lemans blue camaro. To be honest, the thing that drew me to that car was the reversed hood scoop – the “cowl induction”. I loved the color, I loved the interior, the baby moons left something to be desired and there was no visible marking to differentiate this camaro from the 6 cylinder versions out on the lot. The only standout was that cowl induction. Then the salesman came over popped the hood and told me it was a COPO. I was amazed, I was shocked but most of all I was in love. The sticker price was right around $4,200 which was a lot of money in those days (my future wife had bought a Dodge Dart Swinger for $2,400).

The salesman made it clear that there would be no test drives with this car other than a quick trip around the parking lot. That’s all it took. I think I nearly broke my fingers getting the deposit out of my pocket. I was about $1,000 short of the purchase price so I told the salesman I’d go to the bank on Monday and be back to get the car on Monday or Tuesday. Tuesday it was. I had my financing arranged and headed back to pick up my dream car. I vaguely remember some talking head explaining the maintenance schedule to me but I didn’t hear anything. When they finally gave me the keys and I was getting ready to leave the head mechanic came over and said “break it in the way you want it to run”. I said “what?” and he repeated what he’d said. Then he said never mind what they told you, if you want it to run fast break it in that way.

As I pulled out onto route 17 to head home I lit up the tires for 50 feet. And so began the amazing saga of Big Blue.

Within days I pulled off all the pollution garbage and replace the exhaust manifolds with a shiny new pair of hooker headers. The only downside to that was that the linkage to the backup light sensor had to be removed so when I wanted to back up I had to rotate the sleeve on the steering column manually to activate the lights. The next thing I did was to test the performance with various jet sizes in the carb. If memory serves me correctly (and sometimes it doesn’t), the Holley dual feed 850 came with primaries of .068” and secondaries of .072”. I rejetted it to .072” and .080”. She ran like a scaled dog.

As soon as I’d saved up some additional money I took her over to Gasoline Alley in Patterson. I had Dayton ignition set up a dual point distributor and recurve it for maximum performance. She ran like a badly scalded dog.

Back to work to save some more cash and then back to Gasoline Alley. Pappy Huff refined the exhaust system including a pair of 16” thrush mufflers. She sounded heavenly and ran that way too.

The car was quickly developing a reputation in the Newark, Passaic, Patterson area and I was starting to have to go out of the area to find people who would race me on the street. A friend of mine began calling her “Big Blue”. At that time there was a commercial for SOS scrubbing pads and they were called big blue. As I recall the commercial said something like “nothing can stand up against big blue”. The name stuck and, to me and all that knew her in those days, she’ll always be big blue.

In 1970 I took her out to Motion Performance in Baldwin, Long Island. They had a “supertune” package that, as I recall, cost about a month’s pay but it was worth it. I quickly realized that I needed a better way to get all that power to the ground. My L72 engine made lots of power and the M-22 Muncie all aluminum close ratio transmission passed it through to the 4:10 posi-traction rear but the tires just couldn’t get it to the ground with no weight in the rear. That’s when I put the traction bars on her. I recall taking my mother to the grocery store and pulling a hole shot. The front wheels lifted off the ground surprising the heck out of me and left my mother on the verge of a heart attack. Suffice it to say that I never did that again with her in the car.

In those days gasoline was about 27 cents a gallon. For about 4 or 5 dollars I could fill the tank. The problem was that Big Blue only got around 4-6 miles to a gallon (the way I drove it) and the tank only held 16 or so gallons. That gave me a pretty short cruising range. None the less she looked and sounded so good that it was never a problem to find “companionship”.

In November of 1970 I got married to the “other” love of my life. In short order it became apparent that a newly wed couple couldn’t afford the $1,400 a year insurance premium for old blue and still have enough left over to feed her voracious appetite for fuel. More and more she sat parked while we “zipped” around in the Dodge dart swinger which got much better mileage. Like the dragon in the song “puff the magic dragon”, Big Blue was left alone most of the time to just sit and wait for the turn of the key that would make her roar back to life.

By the end of 1971 I decided that I had no choice but to sell her and hope that she would find an owner who could afford to run her and who would gain his own set of life long memories. I sold her to some unscrupulous dealer in Patterson and, shortly thereafter a new owner came to my mother’s house to ask some questions. I happened to be there and answered all his questions but I was surprised to see that she’d changed. She now sported a black vinyl top and a rear spoiler. The look suited her well but it also made it clear to me that she now belonged to someone else. Her new owner seemed to love her as much as I did so, although I was sad to see her as someone else’s car, I was happy that she was in good hands.

Through the years I’ve often wondered what ever happened to my Big Blue monster. Then, on August 29, 2008 my mother called me and told me that someone had called and inquired about “the camaro”. I returned Dan Palchanes’ call and we talked for more than an hour. Dan asked if he could have the current owner call me and I said sure. Alan called me and we also talked for quite a while. He told me what was going on with old blue and sent me lots of pictures taken throughout her life as a street racer and drag racer. I’ve often wished I’d never sold her but I’m glad she’s wound up with a new chance, and a new owner that loves and appreciates her just as I did some 40 years ago.

My old memories were rekindled through Alan’s efforts and I can’t thank him enough for including me in this rebirth.