A little COPO History
Irgendwie hab ich in letzter Zeit das Gefühl das dank neuem Camaro und gerade der Neuauflage der Copo Camaros man gar nicht darum kommt etas darber zu erfahren.
Meine Frage,
soll ich dazu en paar Quellen posten, oder nicht?
6 Antworten
Her damit! 😉
Her mit dem sagenumwobenen COPOS......das waren wahre Monster 😰
Ford........
eating Chevy.....
shitting Hemi.
Damit hat sich doch hoffentlich das Ami-Volkswagen Ding erledigt.
2 dafür von 96 die es bisher gesehen haben (minus ein paar mal ein eigener Aufruf)
Egal, dann bring ich die original Texte und wenn dann jemand was übersetzt haben will, dann kann ich das ja in Freizeit nachholen.
Edit:
Huch, jetzt find ich den CarCraft Artikel gar nich, den ich eigentlich hier verlinken wollte ... ich glaub ich such nochmal wenn ich wach bin
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Zitat:
Original geschrieben von falloutboy
2 dafür von 96 die es bisher gesehen haben (minus ein paar mal ein eigener Aufruf)
Egal, dann bring ich die original Texte und wenn dann jemand was übersetzt haben will, dann kann ich das ja in Freizeit nachholen.Edit:
Huch, jetzt find ich den CarCraft Artikel gar nich, den ich eigentlich hier verlinken wollte ... ich glaub ich such nochmal wenn ich wach bin
ich dachte mir, dass ich mich nicht mehr äussern müsste, da ja bereits einer, ich unterstelle mal exemplarisch für alle US-Car Motor Talker, seinen Daumen gehoben hat....
Nur mal vorweg, da das ja schon eine gewisse Erwartungshaltung hat:
Copo heißt schlichtweg nichts anderes als: Central Office Production Order.
Dies war eine Anlaufstelle vornehmlich für Firmen und Einrichtungen, die Flottenfahrzeuge bestellen wollten, welche etwas anders ausgestattet waren als die angebotenen Basismodelle, mit entsprechenden Upgradepaketen oder Ausstattungsvarianten. Das konnte eben auch ein Biscayne mit 427er Maschine sein der eben auch ein 6 zylinder Biscayne, der aber innen extrem aufgewertet war.
Oder eben ganz einfach Taxen, Polizeiwagen oder Vertreterfahrzeuge.
Interessant wurde es dan als Don Yenko (im Grunde ein gewöhnlicher Chevy Händerl) und Konsorten feststellten, dass Sie über diesen Bestellweg die normalweise in Mittelklassewagen nicht mehr möglichen leistungsstärksten Motoren bereits ab Werk einbauen lassen konnten.
Hier denke ich greift dann falloutboys Beschreibung ein.
ach naa endlich gibts den Artikel mit dem Anfangen wollte. Jetzt war ich kurz davor den abzuschreiben. Das interessante ist, dass der online Artikel weit mehr Text enthält und einen gaaanzen Haufen mehr Bilder
History in the Making - Chevy COPO Camaro
The Rebirth of the COPO Camaro
By John McGann, Photography by John McGann - Car Craft, March, 2013
This was an important day. You could feel it in the air. It was early August 2012 in Detroit, and we'd been invited by Chevrolet Performance to be present as the first few COPO Camaro owners officially took delivery of their cars. As COPO Camaro numbers 3, 5, 7, and 8 went home with their new owners, a crowd of Chevrolet Performance engineers gathered to watch as the cars were loaded onto their trailers. These four cars and the remaining 61 yet to be assembled represented several years of work on their part. "This is history in the making," was a phrase that was repeated several times over that day by nearly everyone we spoke with. As a rule, we strive not to use clichéd expressions as our article headlines, but in this case, it seemed unavoidable.
COPO is an acronym for Central Office Production Order. It was a vehicle-ordering process intended for fleet buyers like police departments or trucking companies looking to buy a group of cars optioned a certain way. Among other things, the form allowed certain drivetrain combinations that were not available in the list of regular production options for that particular model.
Back in 1969, Fred Gibb was a Chevrolet dealership owner and drag racer who was tired of seeing Cobra Jet Mustangs and Hemi Darts beating up on Camaros, so he worked with insiders at Chevrolet Performance using this ordering process to create COPO 9560-a '69 Camaro with Chevy's aluminum ZL-1 427 engine, a heavy-duty cooling system, transistor ignition, front disc brakes, a strengthened rear axle with 4.10:1 gears, and either a TH400 automatic or one of three Muncie four-speeds. With the ZL-1 rated at a laughable 430 hp, everyone knew the engine would easily make more than 500 hp by simply removing the AIR pump and emissions nonsense, tweaking the carb jetting and ignition timing, and ditching the cast-iron manifolds for some properly sized long-tube headers.
There were several cars built in the '60s using the COPO process, and some of them were Camaros with iron-block 427s, but just 69 of these special ZL1 Camaros were built, and this is the car referred to today simply as the COPO Camaro. Of them, Fred Gibbs is said to have taken delivery of at least 50. It's reported that the first COPO Camaro hit the dragstrip at the AHRA event in Phoenix, Arizona, in January 1969. We searched our archives to verify this fact and found the following excerpt from an article entitled "AHRA's Best-Yet Winter Meet" by John Thawley in the Apr. '69 issue of Hot Rod:
"The SS/E entry belonged to Fred Gibb Chevrolet. Mr. Gibb had the foresight to have an L-78 engine installed in the Camaro. The car is fresh and some way from being a finished race car but does show strong possibilities."
We suspect that, unbeknownst at the time, Hot Rod was documenting the first COPO Camaro, misidentifying the engine as an L-78, a 375hp 396. But this article does jibe with various reports we've read stating that the COPO was out of competition early in the event at Phoenix.
Closer to home, the Jun. '69 issue of Car Craft contains an article entitled "600-HP ZL-1: How it's done with stock parts." In it, author Bill Jenkins (Yes, that Bill Jenkins) mentions the mythical Camaro in the following passage:
"Incidentally, the only two different current offerings of the aluminum 427 Chevrolet engine are the ZL-1 Corvette and the COPO (Central Office Production Order) 9560-ZL1 Camaro. It should be noted that currently the only dealer who is selling the aluminum 427 Camaro is Fred Gibb Chevrolet in La Harpe. Illinois, so don't be surprised if the Dubuque area dealers never heard of such an animal."
Unfortunately, the rarity and exclusivity of the ZL-1 Camaro may have only been rivaled by its sticker price. Our research shows the cost hovered around $7,300-a fortune for a car that, in street trim, offered performance only slightly better than a well-optioned 427 Corvette. At the time, the asking price was just too steep, and Fred Gibb had a difficult time selling all 50 cars. Tragically, some were modified to make them more appealing to the average buyer by swapping out the ZL-1 engine for a lowly passenger-car 396 and adding back options that were deliberately left out of the COPO package, such as stripes, radios, and (god forbid) air conditioning. Sadly, a similar fate befell the 19 other ZL-1 COPOs ordered by other Chevy dealerships, and many of the ones that did sell were thrashed at the dragstrip. Needless to say, an original COPO Camaro may be the automotive equivalent of a windfall profit. Being that '69 Camaros have only increased in value, owning the rarest of these means you're sitting on a gold mine in your front yard and have struck oil in your backyard.
At this point, you may be wondering what's with the history lesson. No, we're not just filling pages here. We were surprised to learn that very little was written about the original COPO Camaros when they were first produced. For as legendary as they are today, there was very little fanfare back then. Imagine if Hot Rod had known in Phoenix in 1969 what a big deal these cars would become? They may have devoted more space in the magazine to it than just three sentences.
Things are much different now, and we have the opportunity to document this version-the '12 COPO Camaro. Whether or not this current iteration will develop as cultish a following as the '69 Camaro remains to be seen, but Chevrolet seems to be going about it the right way. Like its predecessor, only 69 were produced, they were purpose-built for racing, and one of the three available engines is an aluminum 427 (also laughably underrated). Unlike its predecessor, it's not a street car. It is sold with a serial number, not a VIN, and cannot be registered to drive on the street. Also, these cars were being sold directly through Chevrolet Performance-authorized dealerships. This was done to ensure all the cars would be purchased, and, in fact, all 69 cars were sold before construction began on even one of them.
We've heard there was some discussion among the group developing the car as to whether or not this version should have even been called COPO, fearing some enthusiasts would think it blasphemous. In the end, the team decided that if the car delivered in the performance department, the public would deem it worthy of the heritage implied in the name. And so far, the owners who have taken their cars to the strip haven't been disappointed, as these cars are making low- to mid-9-second passes, and looking very casual in the process. We will know more next season, as more COPOs take on cross-town rivals the Cobra Jet Mustangs and Drag Pak Challengers.
By now, the technical specs on the '12 COPO Camaro are old news, so we won't devote too much space to them here. You can find several print and electronic sources for that information, and one we highly recommend is Chevrolet Performance's own social media site, The Block (www.theblock.com). What we can provide, however, is an exclusive, insider's look at the construction of these cars. We spent one day in Wixom, where the COPO engines are hand-assembled, and the next at a smaller, "off the grid" site where the cars are built. It was thrilling to be part of the process, and we saw stuff that few people in the world get to see, and some of it we swore not to talk about to this day. When a guy from Chevrolet Performance tells you he's gonna have to take your camera away before showing you something, you know it's huge.
Build Your Own
We've just heard there will be a run of 2013 COPO Camaros. If you desperately want one, go to the Chevrolet Performance website (www.chevroletperformance.com), and get on the mailing list. Also, everything that goes into a COPO car is available for sale at your local Chevy dealer's parts department. You can even buy the build book the assembly team used at their secret facility in Michigan.
Bild Unterschriften
- Keine
- The Performance Build Center is where the COPO engines are built, and Ron Hein (right) is the guy who built many of the engines for these cars. On the day we visited, no COPO engines were scheduled to be built, but this facility is also where the LS9 and LS7 engines are built by a single assembler, start-to-finish. That’s an LS7 Ron is putting together.
- Upon arrival, we weren’t disappointed. We were expecting to see a partially automated assembly-line process, but, actually, these cars are built completely by hand starting with bodies pulled off the regular Camaro assembly line in Oshawa, Ontario. Their first stop is this section of the building, where they are fitted with new suspension brackets and a rollcage. The main hoops of the rollcage are seen on the rack near the center of the photo.
- While on the lift, the exhaust-heat shields are removed as are the mounting brackets for the Camaro’s independent rear suspension. In their place, new brackets are welded in that will hold the Strange 9-inch rear axle. A chassis stiffening brace is visible in the bottom right of the picture. We were impressed to see that the Camaro’s unibody only needed reinforcements here at the forward section of the rear subframe and another piece welded in to the floor between the rollcage’s X-brace.
- The cars begin to take shape quickly after the paint has cured. The floor plan is set up so that several operations can happen simultaneously and in no particular order, so while one car is having the rear suspension and brakes installed, another may be getting a fuel cell and lines plumbed in.
- The dashboard brace is pre-assembled with the steering shaft, brake master cylinder, throttle pedal, and instrument-panel section of the wiring harness. The harness itself is the regular Camaro harness that has been ‘thrifted’ in the interest of weight savings. Circuits and modules not needed in the race car have been removed.
- After the engines arrive from Wixom, the entire front subframe, including the steering rack and radiator, are assembled on a cart. This is the naturally aspirated 427ci engine. The other two engine choices both measure 327 inches but are built with the big-bore LSX block. You can have a 327 with either a 2.9- or 4.0L Whipple supercharger. Though approved for several types of manual or automatic transmissions, the COPO Camaro is only sold with a Powerglide. It’s up to the owner to decide if he wants to install a three-speed automatic or possibly a TKO or Liberty five-speed.
- There is no power assist for the brakes, so the COPO’s engineers had to modify the firewall to mount a manual-brake master cylinder. Note the strut rod that supports the firewall to eliminate flex during hard braking. Another cool feature visible in this picture is the paint stripes on all the fasteners—not because we love Concours d’Elegance restorations, but because the build team is being methodically thorough with all the fastener torqueing sequences. You don’t want a bolt to come loose on a 9-second pass.
