1969 copo camaro

[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.

[JChlupsa]

pretty neat history

[Smokey]

Stuff like this brings a tear to my eye.

[Born30YrsLate]

Hey Alan...great info...quick question...does this car have the D80 code on the cowl tag?...I see the rear spoiler but not a front one?...I must be staring at these pics too long in admiration!...

[deuce-less]

as delivered by chevrolet to MK the car was equipped as follows:

tinted glass
center console
positraction 4:10 rear axle
pwr disc brakes
special 4 spd trans
F70 x 14 WL tires
special instumentation
AM FM radio PB
style trim group
custom interior
Drk blue vinyl trm
Le mans blue
High performance unit

the trim tag shows no spoiler, the rear spoiler and vinyl roof were added by owners after James hager jr.

[Rixls6]

Great stories. Just reading them makes me want to own the car!

Wish I had an extra $295K laying around.

[CC Rider]

[ QUOTE ]
Great stories. Just reading them makes me want to own the car!

Wish I had an extra $295K laying around.


[/ QUOTE ]

X2

[Donutblue]

Boy, the timing was right for that to be a chapter right out of "Love Story".

[jeff-san]

WOW...one BAD ASS ride! how cool to get in touch with the original owner and get his memories laid out from day 1. I could feel the passion and emotion take me right back to high school again...sometimes reading these stories, it feels like I havent matured passed my high school days.

I know I'm not the only one that started thinking back to High School and our very first car or cars that we'd owned. what a great story on a very special car. someone is gonna get a very special ride. I would gladly see my heard of turds just to get a chance of buying this car. I know it would leave me alot more room in my garage too. :

again, thanks for sharing your car and it's passed lives with us. good luck on the sale!

[deuce-less]

prior owner cary van nuis tell's of his time with the copo and some of it's race history

My Story of the Copo Camaro
And Her Racing History


Cary Van Nuis
October 2008


My story starts out like some of the others. I guess all 17 year olds have some of the same dreams. Dan Palchanes had sold the car to Brian Wilbur and a few months later he had spun a bearing in the engine. In 1975, the fall of my senior year, I bought the car from Brian; when I saw the car I fell in love and had to have it. I towed the car to our school auto shop, pulled out the engine and rebuilt it. I spent all winter working on it and in the spring of 1976 the engine went back in and we fired it up. It had a great sound. I was not a street racer, I just had fun driving the car.

In the summer of 1976 I started working at Corbo’s Sunoco. He has had a lot of race cars and was interested in racing my Camaro. He showed me how to set up the engine to make the car run faster. One night I was racing down Route 287, pedal to the metal and all of a sudden the oil pressure dropped and the engine started knocking. I towed the car back to Corbos, pulled out the engine and had Tony Feil rebuild it. The car never ran better. It would easily run up to 8000 RPM. Joe wanted to build another race car and I wanted a new car so in the summer of 1977 I sold him the car. Joe and I disassembled the car completely. The chassis went to Dauernheim Race Cars where the roll cage and rear were installed. The engine was sent to Tony Feil Competition Engines. The engine was the original 427. I don’t believe it was bored out. It had reworked aluminum heads from Chevrolet. We wanted to keep the car as light as possible and the rules for racing stated that the more cubic inches there were the heavier the car had to be. It had a Tunnel Ram with 2 Holley 1200 CFM carburetors. I am not sure of what the exact size of the carbs had been. We used the MSD Crank Trigger Ignition and a cable driven tachometer mounted on the dash. The transmission was a Doug Nash 5 Speed with a Long Shifter but we only used 1st through 4th gears at first. The rear was a Dana, and I think with 5.13 gears. The interior was mostly left in tact. I think the seats were out of a Maverick, because they were lighter. Eventually the deluxe door panels were removed and the standard panels were installed. The back seat was removed for the narrowed rear. The body work was done by K&L Auto body in Somerville. We finished reassembly of the car in the spring of 1978.

Joe named the car “Blue Mule” because he thought it was a real kick in the ass. So, with the name on the back of the car it was ready to run in B-Modified Production. In that class you did not have to slam on the brakes at the end of the run so as not to run faster than your index. Our index was 9.75 seconds. You have to picture this 18 year old kid who never drove a car at a drag strip or even watched a race before. I had no idea how the tree worked or what to do. Our first time out was at night at Island Dragway in North Jersey. I pulled up to the line in this new race car with around 700 HP under the hood. I launch the car just like I was leaving a stop light. I ran through all the gears and ran about 130 MPH. When I got back to the pits I was so scared I was shaking. Well, in the first run the fan belt flipped and overheated the engine. That happened two more times before something happened to the engine and it melted a piston. The car went back on the trailer and we went home.

Joe had another engine to use while the 427 was being repaired. This one was not as fast as the 427 but we were able to set up the car and get things right with the chassis. When the 427 went back in the car it ran near its index but not much faster. You had to run at least 2 tenths of a second under your index to be competitive and cut a good light. I was never good at cutting a good light but I new how to run the car.

One Sunday we were at Englishtown and working on setting up the car. I would launch the car at about 9000 RPM and it would normally pull the front wheels off the ground about 6 to 8 inches then drop back down. But it never really felt like it launched well. I suggested that we raise the wheelie bars, so we did. The next time I took the Blue Mule for a run it felt different when doing the burn outs. Unfortunately when the front end came down it smashed the bottom of the headers. I made my run anyway. When I launched the car, it left like a Pro Stock. The front end came up and held the wheels off the ground the whole time in first gear. I hit second and up they came again. I left so hard that the engine ran out of fuel at the top of the RPM range in both gears and the time was not that good because of it. We never did that again, but I always felt that if we kept experimenting with the bars we may have been able to have better run times. That was the only time I actually felt like I was being pushed back in the seat. Looking back now, the Mule was an easy car to drive and always went straight the whole trip down the track.

We raced mostly in New Jersey at Englishtown, at Island Dragway and sometimes in Pennsylvania. We raced in the Summer Nationals in 1978 and won our class. We were just running our index. The reason we one the class was because the competition broke at the line. At that same event we were running at night and on one of the runs the car ran a 9.53 at 137 MPH. That would have been a new class record for B-Modified, but you had to make a second run at the same event at that ET and we could not do it. The time was great because we never had an ET that fast but the MPH was a little slow. The car usually ran 140 MPH. As far as I know it never ran that fast again.

Joe had been talking with Bill “Grumpy” Jenkins about the car and Bill gave him the plans to build a small cubic inch Big Block. It was a 454, 2 bolt main engine with a crankshaft from an early Big Block Truck engine. I think it was a 353 cubic inch engine. Not sure of the original truck Cubic Inch. When the engine was completed it was a 373 with the heads moved on the block so the spark plugs were towards the center of the cylinder. The car still ran about the same ET. By now the rear gears were only lasting about 3 runs down the track. A Ford rear was installed with a higher gear ratio and now we were using all 5 gears in the Doug Nash transmission. By now the car was breaking a lot of parts, I was loosing interest and my driving was not good enough to be able to cut a good light, so I stopped driving in the summer of 1980.

Tom Martino took over the driving. He had his own race car but also drove the Blue Mule. He could cut a good light and won a few races with the car, but the car was still breaking parts. At the end of 1985 I moved from north Jersey. I don’t know how much racing was done. I think Joe had to run the gas station and could not race as much. I heard another driver took a few runs with the car but never did well. Dan told me the car was sold in 1990.

I have a lot of great memories of the car, mostly as a street car. I would like to thank Dan Palchanes for keeping me informed and finding the car before it was junked. To Alan Forman, a man that I have never met has given me the opportunity to see my old car restored to the way I remember it. Thank you. It is once again on the road and in good hands.