First Generation

Where the Name Came From

Chevrolet said merchandising manager Bob Lund and vice president Ed Rollert found "camaro" in a French-English dictionary as slang for "friend" or "comrade," picked to suggest the companionship of a good personal car. The press pushed back at once. Ford researchers and Motor Trend both reported that no such French usage could be found, and less flattering "definitions" went around, including a shrimp-like creature.

When reporters asked what a Camaro was, Chevrolet product managers said it was "a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs," and that line, not the dictionary story, became the car's motto. The dictionary account is still Chevrolet's official origin story, and the entry is real. Car Life reproduced the dictionary column in October 1966, and its neighboring entries match Heath's Standard French and English Dictionary, the American edition of Harrap's Standard, where "camaro" is marked as popular speech.

Engines

The 1967 range opened with the 230 cu in six at 140 hp (a 155 hp 250 six came later) and climbed through 327 and 350 V8s to the big-block 396. Chevrolet's December 1966 AMA supplement already documents a 375-hp gross L78 for the 1967 Camaro.

The Z/28's 302 was built to fit SCCA Trans-Am's five-liter limit by pairing the 327's 4.00-inch bore with the 283's 3.00-inch stroke. Chevrolet rated it at 290 hp, a figure widely regarded as conservative. The 1969 engine-pad suffix was "DZ," hence the enthusiast name "DZ 302."

The engine assembly stamp records the plant, assembly date and application suffix. On a V8 its pad is ahead of the passenger-side cylinder head; on an inline-six it is near the distributor. The suffix identifies an engine application, not the individual car. Compare the casting number and any partial VIN with the vehicle's records before accepting a matching-numbers claim. The engine and drivetrain decoder reads the different records separately.

Rare Factory Equipment, 1969

Several 1969 options make a car far rarer than its badges suggest.

JL8 four-wheel disc brakes were offered only from January to July 1969, and 206 were built. They brought larger rotors and four-piston calipers at every corner, came with 15×7 Rally wheels, and cost $500.30 on SS and Z/28 cars or $623.50 on others. Most went on Z/28s; the Camaro Research Group documents 27 on other cars.

The cross-ram intake, two Holley carburetors on an aluminum dual-quad manifold, was homologated for Trans-Am and sold over the counter for the Z/28 at about $500. With no chokes and no manifold heat it was hard to live with on the street. Documented cross-ram cars now reach six figures.

ZL2 cowl induction, the "Super Scoop" hood, was a $79 option from mid-December 1968. It drew high-pressure air from the base of the windshield, and the name and idea came back on later Camaros.

The COPO Cars

Central Office Production Orders were GM's channel for fleet and special orders outside the catalog. In 1969 performance dealers used it to obtain factory-installed 427 engines outside the ordinary Camaro ordering range. SS396 branding was a separate matter: late-1969 C-prefixed applications could actually displace 402 cubic inches, so the badge is not a literal displacement limit.

COPO 9561 carried the iron-block L72 427, rated at 425 hp. Don Yenko pushed for it, with Dick Harrell involved. The Camaro Research Group counts 997 finished cars: 1,066 COPO big-block Camaros less the 69 ZL1s. The 1,015 figure often repeated elsewhere counts L72 engines, spares included, not cars. Yenko himself sold 198; Berger Chevrolet and other dealers sold the rest.

COPO 9560 carried the all-aluminum ZL1 427. In the summer of 1968 Fred Gibb of Fred Gibb Chevrolet in La Harpe, Illinois, asked Vince Piggins for an NHRA drag package. NHRA required 50 cars, and 69 were built: 50 for Gibb (four automatics and six four-speeds in each of five colors) and 19 for other dealers. The ZL1 added about $4,160, nearly doubling the price, and Gibb sold only 13 before sending the rest back for redistribution. The first two, in Dusk Blue, arrived on December 31, 1968; one went straight to Dick Harrell's Kansas City shop for the AHRA Winternationals. Documented ZL1s have sold for well over $1 million.

Pace Cars

The Camaro paced the Indianapolis 500 twice in its first three years.

In 1967 the official pace cars were two white RS/SS convertibles with a blue "bumblebee" nose stripe and blue interior, and about 43 festival-committee replicas and 10 track cars were built for the event. Winner A.J. Foyt reportedly turned down the customary prize car, officially because it had no air conditioning.

In 1969 two SS 396 RS convertibles in Dover White with Hugger Orange stripes, houndstooth interiors and cowl-induction hoods did the pacing. Chevrolet then sold the look as the Z11 package, essentially a $37 striping and appearance option on the convertible, and built 3,675.

Identifying a First-Generation Car

The Fisher Body cowl tag sits on the firewall beside the brake booster on all three years. Its body-style number looks like the start of the VIN but belongs to a separate code system. In the VIN the third digit means engine type; on a 1967 tag it means standard or custom interior, and on every 1968–69 tag it is always 4.

Paint codes on the tag were letters in 1967–68 and numbers in 1969; top codes went the other way. In 1967 only, RPO option codes were stamped on the tag too. From build week 12B of 1969, Norwood cars carry an X-code (X33 and X77 identify a Z/28). Van Nuys cars never did. The cowl tag decoder reads all three years.

Racing

The Z/28 exists because of SCCA Trans-Am, not showroom demand. Chevrolet built only 602 in 1967, short of the nominal 1,000-car homologation minimum, and SCCA accepted the car anyway. Roger Penske's team, with Mark Donohue driving, ran factory-supported Z/28s and won the Trans-Am manufacturers' championship in 1968 and 1969. The full story is in the racing history.