68 yenko

[PeteLeathersac]

This thread keeps getting better & better!.

So it looks like Tom must've made a deal to get his original engine back and swapped the heads back on..
Wonder what happened to the L88?.
Interesting how he wasn't aware it was a 9737 until he got the car back!.

Futher to the '68 Yenko converted cars, is it know how many were RS cars?.
How many known existing '68 Yenko cars are RS cars?.
And is it know if any of the nonconverted '68 9737's were RS cars?.

Interesting stuff!


~ Pete

[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]

[ QUOTE ]


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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]


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]

[ QUOTE ]
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.