The COPO Chevrolet Camaro Returns

In a burst of nostalgia, Chevrolet has revived the COPO name. The acronym, which stands for Central Office Production Order, is a deeply loved piece of Chevy history. And now it's been slapped onto a new Camaro. 

The car at left, which debuted at the SEMA show this week, is called the Chevrolet COPO Camaro Concept. It's a one-off machine that is intended to signify Chevy's unofficial factory-backed return to sportsman drag racing. 

There is a very small, very nerdy part of me that is very, very happy about this. It has to do with 500-horsepower 1960s Camaros and an old car called the ZL1. But mostly, it's about the car on the left. 

More after the jump, if you're interested. (What, you don't like factory-built Camaros with absurd amounts of power? What are you, a communist?) 

In the late 1960s, the General Motors product-ordering system was a mess. Strike that: It was a glorious mess. Waltz into your dealer with cash in your pocket and a desire for a new Camaro or Corvette and you had two choices: One, you could take a car off the lot and drive home a vehicle built to fit some dealer's idea of what the public wanted. Or two, you could order it from the factory. If you took the latter route, you'd sit down with a salesman. Said salesman would present an options list a mile long, you'd make some hard decisions, and you'd end up with a new car tailored to your exact needs. 

In the Johnson-Nixon-Ford era, these options lists were epic. They contained everything. Typical stuff like wheel choices and special paint colors, sure. But also big engines, small engines, transmission coolers, heavy-duty this, hop-up or speed part that. People used these lists to create everything from grandma-special meek machines to street-legal racers, and all of them rolled off the same delivery truck. The only limiting factor was the depth of your wallet and the length of the list.

Above: A 1969 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.

That said, there were rules. Certain engines, for example, could not be paired with certain cars. You couldn't install fire-breathing, special-purpose, big-block drag- or road-race V8s in street cars; GM assumed, and rightfully so, that such combinations would be laughably unfit for normal driving. But there was still a provision for building such cars -- a loophole of sorts.

That loophole was known as COPO, or Central Office Production Order. It was essentially a way to make the impossible happen -- a Get Out of Jail Free option play that allowed virtually anything to make its way through GM's ordering system. It was intended for specialty vehicles such as taxicabs and commercial trucks, but enterprising dealers quickly exploited it for speed. The result: machines like the 1969 Camaro ZL1, above, which featured an aluminum-block, 500-plus-horsepower V8 originally intended for Can-Am and Corvette road racing. (Yin and yang: COPO also produced the famous Yenko Camaros and, um, Heartland Edition Citations.)

Above: The Chevrolet COPO Camaro concept. Note large "COPO" logo on flanks.

Earlier this week, at the SEMA trade show in Las Vegas, Chevrolet unveiled the modern Camaro you see here. It's just a concept, but, as The New York Times tells us:

...[the car] carries a wallop under the hood in the form of either an LS7 or LS9 performance engine package from the General Motors Performance Parts catalog.

"The COPO Camaro is a proof of concept," said Jim Campbell, vice president of GM's Performance Vehicles and Motorsports group. "It is a clear indication that Chevrolet intends to homologate the Camaro for sportsman drag racing."

For reference, the LS7 is the 7.0-liter 505-horsepower V8 used in the current Corvette Z06. The LS9 is the supercharged, 6.2-liter 638-horsepower V8 found in the current Corvette ZR1. The Times continues:

Ford Mustangs and Dodge Challengers, with factory support, already play in the sportsman leagues; the Camaro’s absence has been a shortcoming that Chevrolet has privately pledged to correct. The COPO concept shown here was a first step in the process of providing an actual car for sportsman racing. Like the drag-strip-special Mustangs and Challengers, the Camaro will be a track-only vehicle and cannot be legally registered for street use.

So there you have it: fun on a bun. The name may be a bit of a stretch, given the car's background and intended purpose, but it's still pretty cool.

You can read more on the car at the NYT's blog here, and more on the original ZL1/COPO Camaro here and here.

[Source: NYT]

Import From: http://editorial.autos.msn.com/blogs/autosblogpost-show.aspx?post=c4db43b2-0f9a-4105-9e9e-1202bf7e261c