Don Yenko is synonymous with high-performance Chevrolet cars. He was a Chevy dealer from Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, who lived an active life on the racetrack.
He is probably best known for setting up the COPO system, through which special automobiles could be ordered to the factory in a specific configuration not available to the general public.
However, a lesser-known fact about the emblematic Yenko is that he actually ended up casting ZL1 blocks long after General Motors canceled them.
The dealer wasn’t throwing a curve ball at the corporation; the entire affair was put together with the blessing of the biggest carmaker in the world.
In the mid-seventies, Don Yenko asked permission to use the casting molds from the original ZL1 engines that were made for the nerve-wracking Camaros.
Since those molds hadn’t been used after the 1969 episode, they were still usable, Yenko modified them to have his name cast on the blocks. That’s the very short version of the story about how the Yenko ZL1 blocks came to be.
Some of those motors are still waiting for their inaugural start-up, while others are in cars, ready to hit the road. And this is where things get a bit complicated—there were no Yenko ZL1 automobiles, but there were Yenko ZL1 engines.
Following the abrupt decline of the big-block pony car era in the early 70s, it’s almost a miracle that at the height of the oil crisis, Yenko Chevrolet was turning out seven-liter behemoths that were churning out immense numbers.
How many were made and what happened to them is a debated topic—and it will probably stay this way until the end of internal combustion. However, coming across a 1970 Camaro with a Yenko ZL1 engine in it is definitely a conversation starter, mostly because that car is not supposed to exist—at least, not from the factory. But there are other ways in which a car can morph into a legend.
A tribute replica is one of those ways – and probably the only legal one. So here I am, presenting this Hugger Orange Bowtie icon from the last year of the first generation (that would be 1969) that boasts the unreal all-aluminum ZL1 powerplant.
As you might expect, it’s not a powerplant pulled out of a real-deal Camaro COPO ZL1, but a Yenko cast block in a donor 1969 shell.
In other words, it is a homage-paying example that tips its hat to both the fabulous V8 from 1969 and to the dealer that kept Chevrolet in the racing environment despite the corporate all-out ban on motorsports.
First of all, the car is for sale – that’s the exciting news. The downside of this would be its location - 2 Palings Court, Nerang, on the Gold Coast, Queensland.
That’s in Australia - one half-planet away from Pennsylvania – and if you want to see the car in person, you’d better hurry because it is going up for grabs at an online auction in a few short days.
Although the car is not ‘original,’ the auction house claims that the block is an authentic Yenko block cast in lightweight aluminum from the bottom to the valve covers.
The reproduction went so far as to copy the original sYc (as in Yenko Super Car) logo embossed on the seats. The car sits on 15" American Racing Torque Thrust Type D wheels with Goodyear Polyglass white letter tires. Play the video below to catch a glimpse of what this car is all about.
The block of the ZL1 V8 is capped with Winters Aluminum heads, a Winters intake manifold, and a Holley 780 CFM carburetor.
A transistorized ignition system is fitted to the lightweight powerhouse. Unfortunately, while the Aussies do the best they can to list the features of this one-off ZL1-powered Camaro, the important numbers are left out.
No power or torque ratings are cited, and we don’t have the rear-end gearing. It’s a 12-bolt Positive Traction differential – it would be nice to have the 4.10 ratio in the original ZL1 Chevy Camaros from 55 years ago.
The car also sports front and rear sway bars, chassis connectors, special shocks, power steering, and power brakes (discs on the front, drums in the rear).
The online auction starts on October 4, and bids are open until the 14 – plenty of time to come up with a briefcase of cash, just In case. A note on the description offered on the dealership’s website, just to clear any possible misunderstanding.
The real Yenko Camaros from the late sixties never had aluminum blocks but cast iron units. The all-aluminum V8s made by GM landed only in the ill-fated ZL1, which was created by Fred Gibbs Chevrolet from La Harpe, Illinois.
Regardless of their metallurgy, the COPO Camaros from 1969 – around 1,100 of them – were rowdy machines capable of 13-second quarter-miles right off the showroom floor.
The aluminum rockets could do it in the 11s when prepped accordingly.
Period tests suggested that the engines could have even descended into the tens had they been fitted with a more controlling powertrain that could optimize power transfer to the ground.
Officially rated at 430 hp, the monstrous engines turned out over 500 horses on the dyno – the most powerful engine ever installed by any Detroit carmaker in a production vehicle from the muscle car golden era.
