Factory Street Racing

[Jim Mattison]

Over the years that I was at Chevrolet, I've had some great cars that I've either owned or were at my disposal. The car that I had during the imfamous "street racing" incident was a pre-production ZL1 Camaro.

If I only knew that these cars would become so collectible/valuable, I'd have done a better job of putting them away in my collection. At the time, the Chevrolet Central Office fleet included most everthing and anything that you can imagine: a police demo Impala, with a 510 cid engine, one of each of our COPO cars, plus a complete compliment of standard production and performance vehicles.

Being the youngest member of the group, I wasn't perminently assigned a company vehicle. However, I did get to use all of the factory "hot rods", because they didn't have air conditioning, which was real necessity in Detroit rush hour traffic (especially in a suit), plus the guys knew that I liked the performance models anyhow! For me, it was like being at "Toys-R-Us" for big boys......and getting paid, too!!!