69 Yenko Camaro

[ban617]

Hi , I heard a story the other day about a possible 69 Yenko Camaro around my area , it’s supposed to be white? Were there any White ones built ? Hopefully will be able to check it out soon ...

[Mr70]

Absolutely.http://www.nickeyperformance.com/1969-white-douglas-yenko/

[Kurt S]

Not sold from Yenko.
2 that were created by Douglass Chev with the consent of Don.

[William]

That may be, but not fully accepted by some as true Yenkos. He was a Yenko franchisee and initially did receive cars from Yenko Sportscars, Inc. Later on, he tried an end run and ordered COPOs direct from Chevy. Those cars are not listed on the SYC inventory sheets that have been out there for decades. There is no listing of Douglass COPOs so you could easily be looking at a clone. None of the cars Yenko ordered were white.

The cars Douglass acquired from Chevy are sometimes referred to as 'Dougkos' whereas originals are 'Canonsburg Yenkos.'

[John]

…
… Did Don Yenko give his "blessing" or "approval" to this dealer

… BEFORE Jack Douglas ordered these cars

… or

… AFTER these cars were already ordered ? :dunno:


…:hmmm:

[William]

For the '69 MY, Douglass was a Yenko franchisee. In the now famous April '87 MCR interview shortly before his death, Yenko stated the last 100 cars were very hard to sell because they had become virtually uninsurable. At some point, Yenko had several hundred thousand dollars worth of on-hand inventory and cars on order. Those cars had to be invoiced and shipped for the dealership to remain solvent. I cannot imagine why he would allow a franchisee to breach the contract.

The local Yenko dealer, Yunker Chev, was still running ads for Yenkos in November '69. I remember that time very well. By 1971, you couldn't give a muscle car away.

[JoeC]

According to former Yenko employees, Don was not very happy when he found out that Douglas ordered his own 427 Camaros and ordered replacement Yenko stripes and emblems to install on the cars. They noted some heated phone conversations between Don and Jack.
It was later worked out where Douglas would pay a fee to use the Yenko baging on the 427 cars bought outside the Yenko system.

[John]

… So the "approval" was made by Don Yenko ….

… AFTER the Jack Douglas cars were ordered …. NOT Before they were ordered.

:biggthumpup:

[Unreal]

Story I heard was that Yenko shipped a converted car to Douglass, with the original shipper on the floor of the back seat, or somewhere. When Douglass folks saw that, they realized that Yenko was ordering COPOs, and just putting stripes/badges on them. He figured he could "cut out the middle man" and just buy stripes/badges, which were available from Yenko Performance catalog.

[L78M22Rag]

So, worst case scenario... this is still a white COPO Camaro right?

Looking forward to hearing more about the car if ban617 gets the opportunity to check it out.

[William]

Not necessarily. I have tracked 96 COPO clones auctioned 124 times since 2009. 39 are configured as Yenkos. Of those, 19 would be spotted by those with some knowledge: built too early, six-cylinder or CA VIN.

The remainder pass the VIN test and could fool a lot of people. Many real COPOs have non-OE drivetrain components. Caveat Emptor.

[ban617]

The story I have on this so far is the father bought the car new . So hopefully they still have the paperwork that was with it...

[ssl78]

There is a certain way to tell if it was a Douglas Yenko, by body numbers where the emblems were placed most the douglas Yenkos also had vinyl times chambered exhaust and endura bumpers. The story right from Jack Douglas was he had to pay a fee to Don and received emblems and stripes weather he put the stripes on a car is unknown but they all had emblems put on but in a different location than Yenko put them on.