Factory Street Racing

[copo69]

Jim, I remember you relating a story about some factory (both Chevy and other manufacturers) people and cars being caught participating in some street racing. I think you said it made the newspapers. Do you remember when it was? I'd like to maybe find the articles on it.

[Jim Mattison]

Not one of the high points of my GM career! I damn near got fired over it, even though I wasn't racing. The story makes for some interesting, almost humorous, conversation over "milk and cookies", but I assure you that it wasn't very funny at the time!!!

After all the dust had settled, I think that the Big Three was able to call in some favors and bury the story. I've tried for years to find a copy of the newspaper article, but cannot find it.

[Stefano]

Jim,
Did you have the latitude to pick your company car at the time? Were there any Special Cars or even possible COPOs which were used as your daily drivers?

[Jim Mattison]

Over the years that I was at Chevrolet, I've had some great cars that I've either owned or were at my disposal. The car that I had during the imfamous "street racing" incident was a pre-production ZL1 Camaro.

If I only knew that these cars would become so collectible/valuable, I'd have done a better job of putting them away in my collection. At the time, the Chevrolet Central Office fleet included most everthing and anything that you can imagine: a police demo Impala, with a 510 cid engine, one of each of our COPO cars, plus a complete compliment of standard production and performance vehicles.

Being the youngest member of the group, I wasn't perminently assigned a company vehicle. However, I did get to use all of the factory "hot rods", because they didn't have air conditioning, which was real necessity in Detroit rush hour traffic (especially in a suit), plus the guys knew that I liked the performance models anyhow! For me, it was like being at "Toys-R-Us" for big boys......and getting paid, too!!!

[Stefano]

A pre-production ZL1 Camaro! Was this one of the two Black w/Gold stripes GM engineering cars.

I have been told that a Chicago area dealer had ended up buying one of these ZL1s when the auto show circuit had ended.

It was to have been a very early car and was fitted with a JL8 disk brake set up. It may also have had a fold down rear seat.

Does this Camaro sound familiar?