Earliest known..??.

[cook_dw]

Is this the earliest known footage of Jenkin’s 67 Camaro?


While doing some digging several years ago I stumbled across this video and while looking through other info earlier today I had to retrace where I found the video. No idea when the video was done but it was apparently at Cecil Dragway at the Run What You Brung event. Notice the 67 had the red stocker wheels from his Chevy II on the back. By the lack of leaves on the trees and folks wearing jackets it has to be pretty early in the year. Any way just thought I would share.

https://youtu.be/daWpqICnR_k


daWpqICnR_k

[Lynn]

There are some bad ass cars in that video.
Thanks for posting.

[67since67]

A large chunk of my teenage dreams right there in that video!!
Thanks for sharing Darryl!! - Bill W

[dykstra]

I love the traction “powder”.

[Keith Seymore]

I love the traction “powder”.

Resin.

The whole sprinkling of the powder, and multiple burnouts through it, was quite an elaborate process.

K

[msclassiccars]

So many legends! Very cool video.

[NorCam]

Very cool footage for sure. That Mustang at the 3:30 mark was bad a$$.

Thanks for sharing.

[1967Z28]

Jenkins' L78 was built 03D so it couldn't have been at the track until early April at the earliest. I don't understand why the car has the 396 emblems on the front fenders but not the Camaro ones. Not even the holes.

[cook_dw]

I was wondering if anyone was gonna catch that!! Good eye Jon..

[William]

The car was featured in the January '68 SS & DI. Appears to have the same emblem; the Camaro emblem above it looks to be much higher than the production location.

May be just an old legend, back in the day I heard many Camaro racers replaced the front fenders with GMPD service parts, said to be a thinner gauge steel.

[Jimlt4383]

There is a 1967 RO23 plymouth in the video and they didn't start producing them till about February 15. The altered wheel base 1965 dodge that crashed was the x ramchargers car.

[1967Z28]

I don't think I have seen an NOS/replacement GM front fender that did not already have the holes for the Camaro emblem pre-drilled(punched). I'm guessing all production line fenders had the holes for the Camaro emblem in place as the baseline configuration, especially by the time Jenkins' car was built, however the video images throw a wrench in that thought.

The car was featured in the January '68 SS & DI. Appears to have the same emblem; the Camaro emblem above it looks to be much higher than the production location.

May be just an old legend, back in the day I heard many Camaro racers replaced the front fenders with GMPD service parts, said to be a thinner gauge steel.

[William]

Bill Jenkins' '69 Pro Stock Camaro was built as a Dover White L78 SS. Vintage photos of the car show no Camaro SS or 396 emblems. In addition, the rear quarter louver trim was removed.

Maybe that was just his personal touch.

[RALLY]

I believe that was Bill Jenkins L78 396-375 horsepower motor in that 67 Camaro. He won some races with this car. Quick as usual for Jenkins. Lots of nice drag cars for sure. Malcom Durham Chevelle Strip Blazer was super fast. He was tough to beat with that Chevelle.

[cook_dw]

Bill Jenkins' '69 Pro Stock Camaro was built as a Dover White L78 SS. Vintage photos of the car show no Camaro SS or 396 emblems. In addition, the rear quarter louver trim was removed.

Maybe that was just his personal touch.

Possibly a body in white kinda deal? By then I would say he was running 427+ cubes in S/S?

[William]

JM's '69 Camaro fact book has a section dedicated to Dave Strickler, Jenkins' team member for several years. He was casually acquainted with Jenkins from many years of drag racing and visited his shop to present him with a copy. Jenkins displayed several folders of factory paperwork from the cars he raced. The folder for the '69 had the window sticker and dealer invoice. No free cars or body in white for him; he bought them from a dealer just like anyone else.

The '69 was raced with a ZL-1 engine; no idea if he ever ran the L78. The car is not known to exist.

[1967Z28]

I remember seeing a video of his visit to Jenkins and going through the window stickers. I assume somebody still has that stuff.

[GrumpyJeff]

I remember Bill telling a friend and I at one of the York reunions that Chevy actually gave him two 67's, 1st a SS350 with a transplanted L88 before the end of the year 1966. But sometime in March of 67 one if the 1st L78 cars off of Norwoods assembly line was designated for Bill and that one of his crew (Joe Tryson) i believe ? took delivery of a heater/radio deleted, 4;88 geared Car personally and made the long cold drive back to Malvern in it .

[William]

For some perspective on Chevrolet in the ‘60s, everyone should read these books:

"Chevrolet = Racing?" by Paul Van Valkenburgh
"Best Damn Garage in Town" by Smokey Yunick
"The Unfair Advantage" by Mark Donohue
"On a Clear Day You Can See GM" by John De Lorean

A constant theme through the Donohue & Yunick books is how cheap and difficult Chevy was to deal with.

I doubt Jenkins was given much of anything. Maybe some parts. In his paperwork, there was an invoice for the March 11, 1968 purchase of a used '68 Nova from Ed Rinke Chevrolet in Center Line MI. Shows a purchase price of $2,580.82. The '69 Camaro was purchased from Roth Chevrolet in PA.

Chevy had extensive involvement with sports car racing, NASCAR, SCCA Trans-Am racing. They did do some instrumented testing on Jenkins car, didn't get much from it. According to Paul Van Valkenburgh, they had virtually no interest in drag racing.

[cook_dw]

A semi local racer worked with Jenkins and he (Grumpy) had the sponsoring dealership of loc racer contact GM from Jenkins contact to special order an early 68 Z. Once the car was delivered it went from TN/KY area straight to Jenkins shop for engine & suspension work for the upcoming racing season. Car and driver was fairly competitive before moving to a 69 Z in 70-71 timeframe. He (local racer) allowed me to take photos of original paperwork and Jenkins receipts from BITD. He also had photos of it at the local dealer to me in the fall of ‘67. Great discussion btw.

[William]

My point is getting a bit lost here; you have to read the books to get a sense of what went on back then. Chevrolet did not freely dispense cars and parts to racers in the good 'ol days. Even Penske had his problems with them. After they won the '69 Championship, he sold the Camaros and signed a contract with AMC to race Javelins in the T/A. And he owned a Chevrolet dealership.

[Pusher_Man]

A semi local racer worked with Jenkins and he (Grumpy) had the sponsoring dealership of loc racer contact GM from Jenkins contact to special order an early 68 Z. Once the car was delivered it went from TN/KY area straight to Jenkins shop for engine & suspension work for the upcoming racing season. Car and driver was fairly competitive before moving to a 69 Z in 70-71 timeframe. He (local racer) allowed me to take photos of original paperwork and Jenkins receipts from BITD. He also had photos of it at the local dealer to me in the fall of ‘67. Great discussion btw.

Darrell, I was thinking the exact same thoughts reading through this thread. Glad you commented about that. I remember the local racer mentioned said Grumpy helped get him his car in record time. Did he say he got it discounted pretty good? I was thinking he said he did but can’t remember.

I know he did say Grumpy had loads of heads and blocks (I think, but I know he at least said heads) dropped off at his shop from GM. They did hook him up pretty good, according to this guy.

[cook_dw]

I wasn’t saying Jenkins gave him the car. The program or contact just gave them the car at cost pricing I believe.

Correct Kasey. It was discounted but not 100% certain but I thought he said at cost. Might have to get Nuge to talk with him again. I wish I’d recorded the conversation but again didn’t think about it.

[JoeC]

The Jenkins cars changed a lot race to race if you look at the pictures. Look for emblems, parking lights, side lights (68) , grills - sometimes they were there , sometimes not there or modified. Fiberglass fenders and front parts were allowed in some classes.
The cars were changed for the rules for NHRA, AHRA, Match race, Modified production , SS/C Super Stock , Pro Stock, Gasser etc.

Here is a photo of the 67 with the RS grill , no fender emblems, but mostly this car was run with standard grill and 396 fender emblems.

[cook_dw]

I find it interesting they went the extra effort to black out the lower rocker for RS but no chrome.

[1967Z28]

Chevrolet did give out parts to some racers. Maybe not as directly as Ford and Mopar but it did happen. Fred Gibb did get a cross ram for Little Hoss and this was before he became more high profile with the 396 Chevy IIs and ZL-1s. Ken Deckman, a Pacific NW Trans-Am racer had a cross ram show up on his door step even though he already had one and didn't request it. I believe he got an extra GM fiberglass cross ram hood under similar circumstances. If a local race was coming up you might get a little surprise in the mail. Chevy also had stuff like experimental rear axle assemblies that they would send out for people like Penske to use. Normally they would want something like that returned so they could tear it apart after the race to look at wear characteristics or, in the case of failure, to see why it failed. One of these axles from the Penske Camaro that won Sebring in 1968 stayed with the car and was never returned. It may have had to do with the fact that Penske sold the car shortly after that race and the car went to Canada. Stamped numbers found on the axle housing decades later were confirmed against internal GM records to correlate to a Chevy Engineering test assembly. Bottomline, I'm sure guys like Jenkins got stuff given to them under the guise of testing product in heavy-duty, real-life situations but it wasn't anywhere near what the other car companies did.

[William]

The #1 recipient of complimentary parts was undoubtedly Smokey Yunick, dating back to the '50s. In addition, he was paid [poorly] for development work he did for them. By the early '90s, he had so much stuff he auctioned most of it. That's where 1970 Camaro N500001 came from and the infamous Hemi 302 heads.

A word or so about the heads. I see foolish claims of 600 hp; complete nonsense. He inherited the project when Chevy Engineering couldn't make power with them. After several months of development, they maxed out at 450 hp according to an interview with him in the August 1996 issue of Super Chevy magazine. That was about 10% less than a production-based 302 so the project was scrapped.

[Mr70]

A word or so about the heads. I see foolish claims of 600 hp; complete nonsense. He inherited the project when Chevy Engineering couldn't make power with them. After several months of development, they maxed out at 450 hp according to an interview with him in the August 1996 issue of Super Chevy magazine. That was about 10% less than a production-based 302 so the project was scrapped.


450HP? How is that 10% less than a 290HP 302?

[William]

The production based cross-ram 302 racing engines [block, heads] as built by Yunick were 485-500 hp.

[Mr70]

Thanks for clarifying.