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Automotive Guide The Perfect Camaro

By: David Atkin
Automotive Guide

The prefect camaro, in 1969 Chevrolet would have a grand idea, spawned by the creation of the sYc or Super Yenko Camaro, this car would be called the ZL1 Camaro, and would be the meanest camaro ever built, this car was not for the weak of heart, if you didn’t know what it was capable of it could hurt you very badly.

Only 69 of these cars were ever built, as far as I know, this number may not be right on the money, it can get a bit hard to find these numbers, if you search on the web you’ll find all kinds of different ideas about the production numbers on these cars, the one thing I do know is this, Chevrolet wanted to build a car to campaign at the NHRA, and this car was built specially to do their bidding on the race track

The sanctioning body of the NHRA had some rules about what they would or would not allow to race under their rules, the main rule was this, to be allowed to race the car had to be a regular production model, and this meant that Chevrolet had to produce at the least 50 of these cars to qualify them to race at the drag strip.

These car would go on to prove themselves beyond Chevrolet’s wildest dreams, they came form the factory with an all aluminum 427 CID big block monster engine, that was rated at 430 HP from the factory, which was a severe underrating of the actual power that the car had, but the all aluminum engine in effect made that car weigh about the same as if it had a small block, so you can imagine what would happen.

The car would be sold for what at this time was an outrageous price of $7,200.00, in 1969 Fred Gibbs Chevrolet ordered one of these Camano’s to go and race with, it was a special order car known as the ZL1 Camaro or COPO 9560 “Central Office Production Order” Dick Herrel was to drive the car for Fred Gibbs Chevrolet, and he would set a record for a street driven car during his run as a driver for Fred Gibbs.

The ZL1 Camaro would prove to be an amazing race car, not to mention, it was still a street car also, in street dress Dick Herrel would achieve 1/4 mile times of 11.05 and in full race mode, with the headers uncorked and slicks added he would achieve a 10.35 1/4 mile time on his first run.

Then he would reach a real high for a street driven car, mind you this in as bought from the factory with slicks added and headers uncorked or in full race mode he would achieve an all time high 1/4 mile time of 10.05, now how many cars do you know of from the factory that will pull that feat off.

I live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and have been in the automotive business for about 25 years, and during that time I have worked in all facets of the industry, plus owned my own shops, like I do now.
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