How Many 69 L89 Chevelles?

[Belair62]

That makes sense Bill.....it makes sense someone like J Hrudka would order a truck with an L 89 !!

[68l30]

I don't think Hrudka was the first owner,third I believe.......


Steve

[Belair62]

Oops...first owner must have been a hi-po freak too...

[Schonyenko2]

Another reason/s that people bought new hipo caminos was 1 if you were a farm boy wanting that kind of power you could buy it and write it off as a farm truck. Also it was an easy way to get around the killer insurance rates as it still was classified as a truck even with an LS6. Traction alway seemed to be a problem with them though. Would an elky have a different frt pad stamp than a chevelle for the L89 option? S.

[Mr70]

No...Same engine suffix & plants as Chevelles had.

[olredalert]

--------The original owner ordered the car from Slaton Chevrolet on Federal Highway (Rt.1) in Ft.Lauderdale. Slaton was a very high performance oriented dealership all thru the musclecar era. I bought a loaded 70 Elky SS 396/350/AC (White/black) from them new! Orig. owner owned a high perf shop in Oakland Park. Did a bunch of go-fast boat type work for a long time. Hes still around and a Corvette buddy of mine that has a shop right next to his recently told me he was doing some Harley work now. His idea was to have a rolling showcase of performance with his Elky, but he got sidetracked and only did a few things, fortunatly. He ended up storing it and driving his regular half ton all the time. By the time 75 rolled around it had accumulated 16,000 miles but it looked like 1600. The original paint was simply unbelievable. He had never had so much as a feather in the bed.
--------In 1975 when I heard about the car I wanted it so bad I went to a loan shark for the money. I then worked my butt off for a couple of months and paid him off. I used the car less than a 1000 miles in the next year and sold the car for a whopping $5500. At the time I thought I was doing pretty good as I only paid $4000 for it. Maybe three years ago before the present owner got the truck I heard Joes son was finally going to sell and I offered $35000 for it, but he wasnt interested. Wanted $50 large, and I thought it was to much. Oh well, wasnt meant to be!..........Bill S

[JoeC]

I made a mistake in my above post.
SS convertible production is roughly 2 percent of total 2 door V8s. (not 20 percent) so the total L89s would be roughly 8 of the 400 not 80.
I mixed this up with my "guess" for LS6 convertibles which is about 80 units.
El Camino production is roughly 10 percent of total 2 door V8s but I figured SS ElCamino was a lower percentage so to be conservative I used 5 percent. So my guess would be roughly 5 percent of the 400 L89s would be 20 L89 El Caminos in 1969.
I use conservative numbers to come on the low side of production. As I said this is my guess.
In my opinion any car with a mass production total under 100 units is an very low number.
If you use the percent of total to "guess" at production numbers at least you see where the numbers come from.
Often, I see low production numbers quoted but there is no explanation of the origin of the numbers.


Quote from Dan Carr's web site......
"In 1968, the SS-396 coupe, SS-396 convertible, and SS-396 El Camino were separate models, unlike later years where the SS was simply an option package. This means that the exact production totals for the different 1968 SS-396 models are known. Records show the 1968 SS-396 totals were comprised of 55,309 coupes, 2,286 convertibles, and 5,190 El Caminos. This equates to 88.1% coupes, 3.6% convertibles, and 8.3% El Caminos. This shows that the SS El Camino was probably a significant component of the SS total for any given year"