copo trucks

[mark 68]

Curious if anybody has heard of a 427 copo truck. i seen something about one in a auto museum. if not did they ever offer a performance motor package, maybe a Baldwin Motion or a Yenko?

[PanelDeland]

396 and 402 were the factory BB in this era of trucks.I never heard of a COPO for that.The COPO was actually a system set up for fleet orders and such that the dealerships figured a way to use to build performance cars.I'm not saying it didn't happen ,I just think that trucks of the day were mostly used for work and just gradually becoming the luxury loaded rides that are on the lot now.

[tcb-1]

however, panel is forgetting the ever elusive "Corvette Option".......

[Boog]

ahhh the "corvette option". It was tri power too as I remember..

[Longhorn Man]

there were COPO trucks, but as pointed out, they weren't hot rods.
That one in the museum.. no one has any info what so ever, other than a photo. There'ds no engine pics, no history, no nothing. And if you look at it, there's enough oddities to make you seriously wonder if it is real.

[LONGHAIR]

I am sure that there are literally thousands of COPO trucks. Every state's maintenence department, national park service, large police forces, etc. all order their fleet trucks with the ability to get options or deletions that are not available to the general public. Even Coca-cola is big enough to get special orders.
Back-in-the-day, trucks were not "high performance" vehicles, even the ones with bigger displacement engines. They have slowly evolved into the "car with no trunk lid" that we call a truck today. They have gotten smoother riding, better handling, more comfortable inside to start...then came bigger cabs and shrinking beds. Today a 4-door (seats 6) pick-up truck? can have a bed as little as 4 feet long....Is that a truck? or a car with a big trunk and no lid...Oh, you can get that too.

/rant

[boneyardratz]

in 1967 they made a SS truck for big show in Detroit Mi it was showen with a 1967 Camro painted the same coler wwith the SS stripe like on the Camro I'll do more research to find pics. I use to have some but house fire took all that thanks Tim

[PT'S 70 CST]

I would also think not but have been wrong before. You would think with all of the truck nuts on the board and me for one who has a stack of hot rod and super chevy mags to make a house out of would have heard or seen this before. I have watched all of the classic car shows on speed and spike and they from time to time have a special on COPO (Central office production order) and have never mentioned a truck. I would like to see the pic that yall are refering to.

PT

[66skylarkpost]

my '72 was originaly a u.s. forestry truck on the spid is "special processing"

[brad_man_72]

couple of days ago i saw a 68 chevelle wagon yenko z06

[Longhorn Man]

that 67 wasn't a copo... it was a one off custom, and is the subjact of quite a few threads on this board over the years.
I honestly think only about 1/2 of the people here, or even in the hoby, has a good grasp of what the COPO program actually was/is.

[whatnow123]

I'm actually kind of surprised no one really "hot rodded" these when they were new. Order a big block, auto and posi rear end, tweek the engine a bit and you have a cheap hotrod that could run with most of the Muscle being sold at the time.

[Longhorn Man]

there were some.... I recently saw in an older magazine... hot rod maybe... where they hopped one up back in the day.
But you are right, they were far and few between.
Trucks were work vehicles back then, they made up a VERY small market share back then.

[tcb-1]

it was the car mentality then. how much horsepower per pound. why spend the money factory ordering a truck (read heavy and still being used as trucks, as Andy said) when the hot ticket was, for instance, a big block stuffed in a comfortable Chevelle format?

horsepower was cheap. ahhhh, those were the days......

try ordering a truck or car the way you want it now. "if you order this engine, you have to order this transmission". wish I was around when you could still order a car to your liking........ but I digress.

[manimal]

There is a guy in Barstow that tried to sell me a '69 shortbed fleetside that 'came factory' with a 427 and a Muncie M22 4spd!! I just looked at him and left. Some people will do/say anything to make a buck.
-Lance

[Longhorn Man]

If you had the choice between a well equipped small block truck, for 4500 bucks, or a well equipped chevelle/nova/camaro... you wouldn't even look at the truck. They were actually kinda expensive back in the day.

[ChevLoRay]

C.O.P.O. = Central Office Production Order, right?

I vaguely remember nothing about COPO vehicles. I do remember reading about and being awed by the Yenko's Camaro, Chevelles, Nova's and Corvairs as well as Baldwin Motion's cars and others, including Tasca Fords, and Mr. Norm's Grand Spaulding Dodge's. The stuff was legendary, or we wouldn't still be talking about them.

I'm sure that someone somewhere could write a book about the urban legend vehicles that we have heard about....kinda like "The Hemi In The Barn" and "The Cobra In The Barn" books. Those books have real automotive finds in them. Some are legendary; others are historic. But, they are true.

Q. Ever drive a Corvair Convertible with the 180-horse turbo engine? I gotta say it was more fun per mile than the 427, 435-horse Corvette I got to drive. Musta been the top that could disappear. Then again, I'm easily amused.

[factorystock]

There have always been special ordered trucks available if you had the extra money to spend and extra time to wait for delivery.I would say that most people who special ordered pickups were not interested in super high performance vehicles, they were interested in setting up a truck for a special vocation. There would not have been a large enough market for muscle trucks up to the early 70's.The pickup market today has drastically changed. Most of todays pickup buyers are not your grandfathers generation. They want and demand a pickup to be all things.

[PanelDeland]

ChevLoRay, the ones you mentioned are COPO's.The dealers found they could order an optional engine using the order forms for the fleet cars/trucks and did so to build performance cars easily.Many of the COPO cars were ordered for factory stock racing applications.Back then the mentality was "Win on Sunday,Sell on Monday!"

[Andy4639]

My dad worked for Chevy for 30 years, and I grew up with a company car and truck sitting in the drive way all the time. I never herd him say anything about a truck being built speacial for him and he could order anything he wanted except for a corvette. I know he would have had one if it was possible because he had some of the big block cars all the time.
We had 2 69 pace cars one time for about 3 months sitting in our drive way.
He bought my mom a 67, 68 camaro with 396's in them that he ordered.
He had 454 cowl induction chevells as well. He was a car guy back then.

Here he is in Hickory NC at Evertt Chevorlet. We took this truck on vacation that summer it was his company vehicle.

This was our house in Charlotte.

Here is one of the camaro's and the Impala SS he built for my older brother's.
The picture of him beside the 57 was the day he left Yazoo Mississipi for Detroit to start work for GM.

He built this car while being the GM chevy instructor at Charlotte. It had the 350 turbo transmission that they had in class put in it after the training was completed by all the classes dad taught.

[drivethechevy]

i always thought that copo was a car only thing, and i thought copo only refered to the super sleepers like a camaro with bench interior no radio and hubcaps with a 427 / 4 speed so a person could run a race with what apeared to be their grandmas car and smoke the competition,

i think that it would be pretty cool to build a copo reminicent 67-72, one with no radio, hubcaps, no trim, an idiot light cluster, any trany as long as it wasnt a granny-tranny, a posi out back with a 396/402 or a 427 under the hood
i think seeing a truck built like that so it looks like it could be original would deffinately be sweet
maybe i will build a truck like that to sit on top of my 69 half ton frame someday
that will be a long time from now, but who says i cant start collecting parts to build me a copo truck
nate

[Rack Man]

This explains is it pretty well...

The COPO system was truly intended for more mundane fleet type of alterations. The most common use of COPO system was to specify fleet paint schemes for municipal vehicles, heavy duty springs and special fabrics for use in taxicabs. It was never intended for creating ultra high performance Chevrolet vehicles, but try telling that to Don Yenko, Baldwin-Motion, and Berger Chevrolet.

Don Yenko of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, is largely credited with being the first to exploit Chevy's COPO system. Exploiting it, is probably not the right term to use here, Yenko simply build Chevrolets the way he thought they should have been built all along, more powerful.

[factorystock]

[QUOTE=ChevLoRay;3027455]C.O.P.O. = Central Office Production Order, right?

Yes, that is what it stands for. This order could be for anything Chevrolet built ,not just for Camaros, Novas etc. Agian, this did not happen very often,but there was a time when the central office got involved in the order.The trucks were not referred to as a "COPO truck", just a truck that was built with equipment that was not a regular production option.

[Gray Ghost]

Rackman hit the mark. The COPO's started out as a fleet special order form and only in the last few years of the high performance cars were they exploited by the likes of Baldwin/Motion, Nickey [home of the first supercar], Yenko and a very few other dealerships.

[Andy4639]

I found this by looking up Copo cars.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN



The cab for the truck was pulled from the one ton C/30 line and installed on a C/10 chassis for this special order COPO vehicle. Only the C/30 and up trucks featured these built in clearance lights. The "C" designation was applied to both two and four wheel drive trucks until the arrival of the K5 Blazer in early '69. After that, all 4x4s were "K" trucks. The original Lucas spotlight is a far cry from the multiple HIDs of today but Ron says it works great!