1965 Chevelle 300, 396/425 M22 COPO

[jeffschevelle]

Originally Posted by Too Many Projects

"The original axle was replaced as part of the Olds drivetrain swap back when the car was still fairly new, but an accurate appearing clone axle is in it now."
This is also a very interesting mystery to me. WHY would the original owner swap in an Olds driveline early on ???? Is the 396 engine blown up and not usable ?? I really can't picture any stock Olds drivetrain from that time period coming close to even matching what this car was built with...

I would normally let the owner speak to that question if he was on the site, but I don't think he's much online, so I will give it a shot.

My understanding from him was that Fast Eddie (who spec'd it and bought it new) had moved on to another car by then and had no further interest in racing the COPO Chevelle anymore. A racing friend had the Olds and wanted to continue racing his same Olds, but wanted the COPO drivetrain. Fast Eddie liked the fancier red and white Olds interior, so the drivetrains and interiors were swapped. (I would hope there was some cash boot in there as well, but who knows.)

On another note, the COPO still had the red and white Olds interior in it up until the restoration. I found a fairly nice 300 post car about 10 years ago with a mint set of red 300 door panels, the rubber mat, and nice seats, and hooked the COPO owner up with that car so he would have that interior for the COPO restoration. The seats had a tiny bit of wear so they actually got NOS seat cloth from SMS and used that to recover the donor seats so they would be nicer. The rubber mat unfortunately was not used, as the car has carpet in it now. They said it had a couple minor cracks around the seat feet so they went with carpet instead.