Hey, What is the difference in a yenko camaro and a regular camaro, Ive seen them but except for badging no difference. Is it something like a special edition, kind of like Shelby is to ford?

Yenko was a Chevy dealership. He would buy camaros from GM and stuff them with the baddest 427s he could get. I would love to have one, I couldn't afford one when they were new and at their value today the average working man will only dream of owning one. I would be happy with a clone.
Bob

Yenko Camaro's, Nova's and Chevelle's were regular production cars sent to the Yenko dealer. The drive trains were yanked out of them and Chevy 427 crate engines (they did not call them crate engines at the time) were installed along with Muncie 4 speeds and 12 bolt axles. Brute horsepower in a chassis that could not handle it. They were not known for superb handling, but were obscenly fast in the quarter.

Today an original Yenko with documentation is worth probably close to half a million dollars. The clones bring 100K or more at auctions.

Another rare high dollar Chevy muscle car is the Motion Industries Camaro's.

Vince

Wow. so you could get these cars, you didnt have to "soup them up" b/c it was already done, all covered by a factory warranty... nice

Baldwin Motion, Nickey Chevrolet, Yenko, and a few others that the names I can't remember right off. ( A case of the CRS today) One was a big Mopar dealership in Chicago I believe that did the same thing. High priced then and out of reach now.

The owner of the Yenko dealership was Don Yenko, put the biggest motors and best drivetrains Chevy had to offer in them. COPO was simmilar and part of Chevrolet itself, I think it stood for Corporate Office Production Order, basicly a checklist of a lot of goodie options 1 could have there car built to order with, then it was made at the factory and shipped to the local dealership. Carrol Shelby did about the same thing with the Mustangs, put the best parts Ford had to offer, and put in them, gave them some stripes, and called them Shelby's.

Grand Spalding Dodge........................

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Pretty much as stated above. yenko advertized inthe magazines and must have sold a bunch of these cars nationwide. If memory serves me they were about double the price of the SS models. I bought a 67 Chevelle SS396 for $3000 and ordered it just the way I wanted it. The Yenko's were about 6k or so. That put them in the rich guy bracket. We had a couple come into the hotrod shop I worked in a few times but I think both of them were wrecked as were a lot of others. They really didn't handle that well even with the heavy duty suspension and brakes. Many blew up motors and were replaced with SBC and even PG of the day. Many were rusted and faded and repainted and simply disapeared. These didn't have 7 year rust out like now. 3 years in Minnesota winter and you had holes in them even with the best of care. They were real street racer however. I saw the remains of one last year that still had the original trim when the guy found it. He didn't know at the time what it was. It had a blown up SBC and PG in it and was in pretty rough shape. He sanded off the trim and didn't take pictures and tubbed it and added a big roll bar and a BBC with an electric od. Goes like crazy but seems like a waste. He might have restored it but not with matching numbers. Each to their own.

You could get some pretty hot stuff back then if you knew about them. I think most of these type of factory hotrods were bought by a little older guys that had better incomes as most of us kids were fresh out of school and really didn't have the best jobs. It was actually hard to build a faster car than these as there just wasn't as many motor choices as there is now and the technology had not been developed. I think 450 hp was about as high as they got. Aluminum heads were very rare and even a good porting job was very expensive and of questionable value as there weren't many places that could flow test either. We had one ofthe first BBC crate motors in 66 in our dragster. It was hard to work with as the race stuff was just being developed and we were the test beds. there weren't Merlin blocks so blocks split regularly and bearings went out for no good reason even with constant checking. In the end these were era cars as were a lot of the factory hot rods. They were pretty much gone with the gas crunch in the early 70's. I wouldn't pay 1/2 mill for one today that's for sure even if I had it to burn.

Even more rare than the Motion Camaro is the Motion Chevelle, our club received word that if the car is restored enough to drive, we will be hosting an original Baldwin Motion Chevelle at the Northern Chevelle Gathering July 9th.

Another of the big gun Chevrolet dealers that did this sort of thing was Berger Chevrolet.

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Let's not forget Fred Gibb Chevrolet in LaHarpe, IL. He was a small Chevy dealer in a little wide spot in the road of a town ( I live near there ) but he and racer Dick Harrell are largely responsible for the original ZL-1 Camaro's.

Baldwin raised the bar a little too high when they built a 454 Vega and advertised it as a 9 second streer car. I bet that was a hand full. Those were the good old days.
Bob

I forgot about some of those. You know, with all these factory hotrods you would think a lot survived but I think they were flogged to death and a lot of guys simply couldn't afford to have them fixed properly and they gradually disappeared.
Like the dinosaurs....they ate each other so much that only a few were left when the big meteor hit and it wiped out the rest.
Wouldn't it be something if some guy bought up about half of the remaing ones and destroyed publically half of those. What would happen to the value of those survivors ??? Quick profit or quick death???

Hey guys, don't forget Bob Tasca Ford. His upgrades were responsible for some of the factory performance stuff too...

But I think Yenko was really the king. Saw a Yenko Corvair a couple years ago, drooled the rest of the day....

what about those Stinger Corvairs, I have never even seen one of those

How do I tell the Yenko Chevelle from the Chevelle?