Dealer Order Procedures

[Jim Mattison]

It is my pleasure to try and recall some of the many things that we did at Chevrolet many years ago. Had I only known that some of the vehicles we produced were going to become so collectible, I'd have done a much better job of saving all my old records and notes. I'd have also bought-up and put away many of my old company cars.

When we began the 1969 COPO 427 Camaro and Chevelle project, all of the vehicles were scheduled to go through Yenko Chevrolet. Don Yenko was a very bright businessman and he recognized that he potentially controlled that entire market.

As dealers found out about these cars, pressure was put on the sales department to make them available to everyone. We finally devised a program that would allow the dealers who were truely into the performance market, the ability to order these COPO cars so long as they met our ground rules. Orders were accepted so long as the dealer would take a total of (10) ten cars, over a 60 day period. However, toward the end of the program we were accepting single orders.

As far as the batch building of these vehicles, that was scheduled by the folks at the assembly plant. I remember that the biggest problem that we had scheduling these cars was the availability of rear axle assemblies from our supplier.

Jim Mattison