Re: COPO Convertible
Kevin, you are right about Milton being "excited" when he first got that car. Jake (JT) who was his right hand man for many, many years told me that I needed to come up and see this oddball Z-28 that Milton had just purchased. I thought it might be "Agent Orange" as he did not tell me the year of the car.
When I got there, JT and I finished watching a race that was on TV and went down to the bottom of the hill to his shop. We walked up to this British Green 68 convertible that had Z-28 stripes and emblems on it and a cowl hood. I said "is this the car?" He said yes and I said "okay someone put Z-28 emblems on a convertible Camaro." JT said nope, look at this and he handed me a stack of paperwork. I read through it and was just blown away that I was looking at the one and only Z-28 convertible. While I had been looking at the paperwork he went over and opened up the trunk and hood. I peered inside the trunk and there layed the crossram setup. He told me that Milton was more excited about this find than the Motion car. Then JT explained the hood to me as being the prototype for the over-the-counter fiberglass hood for the 69's for the Trans Am series. This car was loaded with options that I had not seen in a while on any Camaro, much less a Z-28. He told me that it was built per Estes request, because he liked convertibles, and was used as a promotional tool for the Z-28 plus as a test bed for parts for the 69 model year. He also said that Estes had another convertible 68 RS/SS 396 that was loaded.
I was up there one Sunday doing some research on some of the cars Milt had. JT and I were watching a Nascar race this time, and I told him that I wanted to get some more pictures of the Camaro's but I didn't have time that day and I told him I would be back towards the middle of the week. He said that was fine, just to give him a call and he would pull out any car that I needed to look at. Well I didn't get a chance to get back up there as JT passed away a couple of days later.
Shortly after that is when Milton sold off his collection, which you have a lot of his Camaros. I have not seen any of his cars since that day except for a few Mopars that were at Floyd's on display..............RatPack...............
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