68 yenko

[enio45]

I think the link above tells the story on Toms car, engine and discovery of its origan. Being from Aliquippa, PA myself, althought a bit younger than Tom, Bobby Williams was the person who bought the L78 motor out of Toms car. All of us that know Bobby, he has virtually every motor he ever got his hands on still today. He had a performance shop near J&L Steel downtown Aliquippa. Bobby is still around if someone needs to verify the info.

Tom had Ed Cunneen do some background leg work for the then "COPO Certification" on his Bronze car and my Ralley Green car and found that Toms was dealer transferred from Yenko to Kenny Ross. My car was sold at Yenko Chev and documented thru the original owner (still alive) and also verified with the subsequent owners (all from Coraopolis, PA)as well and as stated in the MCR article March 07.

Related to one of the above questions - "im told" that there are possible 6 non coverted cars - due to the fact that a quality of 70, 68 yenko camaros were to be produced for the year. However 64 were converted and the remaining were sold as L78 cars. Joe Barr has some info that refers to these non-converted cars in an ad back in the late 68 season.

My car body number is 3 digits away from the recent ebay bronze yenko from Tenn and as you would expect, same build week of 07E. Kind of supports that these cars were made in certain batches.

I was told that of the remaining 6 non-converted cars, there were 1 ralley green and 5 corvette bronze. Dont know if any were RS and if the above is true?? Of the 6, two are known to exist, both non RS cars.

As you can expect, i look everyday for the other 4 - not knowing where they can show up, if at all.

Hope this helps some understanding.

[sYc]

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Tom had Ed Cunneen do some background leg work for the then "COPO Certification" on his Bronze car and my Ralley Green car and found that Toms was dealer transferred from Yenko to Kenny Ross.

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Not to put Ed and his certification process down, but unless something has changed since TB and I visited about adding his car to the '68 list, no actual docuemntation existed about being from Yenko, Ed (as he did on numerous occasions on various cars) was just going on what was told to him. If documentation exists, I would love to see it.

[enio45]

Tom, i understand your POV... makes sense. I have not talked to Robin about the documentation - probably an NICB (or is it the NCIB) report would be a excellent piece of documentation to have.

[sYc]

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Tom, i understand your POV... makes sense. I have not talked to Robin about the documentation - probably an NICB (or is it the NCIB) report would be a excellent piece of documentation to have.

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Yep...

[enio45]

Tom,

Thinking thru this again - if Yenko was the only dealer doing the 1968 camaro - 9737 conversions to a yenko car, then by default he had to order and accept delivery of the car.

Is there speculation that other dealers could get this 9737 copo car?

I think Joe Barr's doc's seem to indicated that Yenko had these 9737's as leftover (or non converted cars) . I have not seen his docs etc...so i cannot say for sure. I would like to try to nail down the definitive story to this.

Would be helpful to the hobby.

Any thoughts on this theory?

[Chevy454]

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Is there speculation that other dealers could get this 9737 copo car?

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It's possible, I suppose...we were under the assumption Gibb was the only dealer that recieved any '68 COPO Novas, until Mr. Berger himself told us they got *at least* 1...!

BTW, I believe the L88 from Tom's Camaro went into a '68/9 "Motion" Corvette...

[sYc]

Who knows?

For many years it was thought that Gibb was the only one to get '68 COPO Novas, but Dale Berger told a group of us that they got one. I have no reason to doubt Dale, as the same thing happened with the ZL-1s, where it was thought that Gibb was the only one to get them, but records appeared later showing that Berger got the #3 car.


As I told TB when we had this discussion, as with all cars, we need to stick to the facts.

1. the car appears to be a legit '68 COPO 9737 Camaro, L-78
2. was sold new at Kenny Ross Chevrolet

So, IMO, as it stands now, the car is a Kenny Ross COPO Camaro, which is not a bad thing, as that makes it one of one.

[JoeC]

Tom B was trying to get the NICB report.

There are a few more items that led us to believe it is from Yenko but the NICB report is needed to prove it out.

Ed C has paperwork from GM that shows that the COPO 9737 option was first called the “Sports Car Conversion/Yenko/” in 1968, then in 1969 it was noted that COPO 9737 was made available to other dealers and not just “Yenko Sports Car Inc.” The Yenko name was used twice in the document.
It appears that COPO 9737 was only for Yenko in 68 but maybe some did slip out. I still have not heard of any other non-Yenko 1968 Camaros with the COPO 9737 option but still this is not proof that Tom’s was delivered to Yenko.

The Yenko ad shows 6 special SS396 Camaros and was late in the year. Five were Corvette Bronze. We thought having 5 of the same color cars for sale when the new model was coming soon, made a trade or discount sale to Ross seem possible but still this is not proof that Tom’s was delivered to Yenko.

Jim M from the F&SO dept. said he remembered working with Yenko on this 1968 COPO order with the special engine code. Jim thought the order was for 427 Camaros and that Yenko ordered over 70 of these. He posted this info on here or on TC - maybe that thread still around.

It is not correct to say that there were 70 1968 COPO 9737 ordered and 6 were sold as unconverted. Some of the 1968 427 Yenko Super Camaros were built from non- COPO 9737 Camaros (4 according to the list here) so the 70-6=64 is not correct.
The ad just says that 6 cars were for sale at the time of the ad.
I have not seen any info that shows how many SS396 COPO 9737 Camaros Yenko received or how many were sold as unconverted cars.

Some one still needs to get the NICB for Tom B's car.