I remember very well the first Yenko Chevrolet Camaro I first saw. It was at the Carlsbad California Drag strip just south of Oceanside California. It was bright yellow and had black bucket seats. He had just made a tire smoking run through the quarter mile and I wanted one so bad but I had a new wife and a new little baby girl. I was in the Navy and about to go to Argentia Newfoundland and it just wasn't the thing I needed to be putting my money in at the time. Little did I realize at the time what a good investment that would have been.

Don Yenko of Yenko Chevrolet in Pennsylvania built the first Yenko Camaro in 1967 to compete with the 428 Mustang and the Hemi Cuda and Challengers and compete it did. He took a 1967 Chevy Camaro SS and put the 427 Corvette engine in it. DOn Yenko is to Chevrolet what Carroll Shelby was to Ford back in those days. Ford had the 428 Cobra Jet Mustangs and MOPAR had the Hemi Cuda and the Hemi Challenger and Chevrolet had the Camaro with the 327 V-8. To Chevy die hards like Don Yenko, that just didn't cut it so he built the first Yenko Camaro.. It was fast and did real well against the competition but since it wasn't a factory production line car, it wasn't allowed to compete in the stock classes at the drags. General Motors had put out an edict that the largest engine that could be put in the Camaro was the 400 Cubic inch V-8.

That just didn't cut it with Don Yenko so he got busy and built one at his dealership. It had the 425 horsepower 427 Corvette engine and a four speed transmission. It had a heavy duty suspension and 4.10 to 1 rear end. He made about 50 of them in 1967. He also equipped them with a fiberglass hood. In 1958 he made a few more and they had a close ratio four speed transmission.

In 1969 Yenko finally got Chevrolet to make them on the assembly line using a COPC (Central Office Production Order...When and if you got one from the factory in 1969, they came with the 425 horsepower 427 which was very conservatively rated. People said it was more like 450 horsepower. It had a 4.10 positraction rear end, a bigger front stabilizer bar and it had power disc brakes.It also had an extra heavy duty radiator to cool the big block V-8. You had your choice of the close ratio four speed or the Turbo 400 Hydramatic transmission.

Don Yenko sold 201 of the Camaros in 1969. 171 of them were equipped with the four speed and 30 were equipped with the automatics. Yenko rounded out this package with a front and rear spoiler, a cowl induction hood, and special 427 Yenko badging.

There have been a couple of these Yenko Chevrolet Camaros sold at a Barrett-Jackson auction for over two million dollars in recent years. Boy should have I invested that $4500 in 1969. I don't have any idea what the percentage of return on that would be but I guarantee it is way more than ant CD has ever paid. There is a 427 Camaro on ebay right now for $51,650 but it is a clone and not a true Yenko.

There were a lot of that showed up at the drag strips back in that time and right off the showroom floor they were turning in the low 13s and well over 100 miles per hour in the quarter mile. With a good set of headers a set of slicks and somebody that knew how to drive they were turning 11.94 and a114 in the quarter. they came with a single four barrel carburetor but the 1967 Corvette had a three deuces set up that seemed to find there way on to a few of the Camaros but it wasn't a factory option. The Yenko package was an $800 option. It is estimated that there may have been as many as 500 built in 1969 but Yenko sold 201.