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Fred Gibb
Dealer — the COPO 9560 ZL1 order
A small-town Illinois Chevrolet dealer who was not originally a performance dealer at all, and who is the reason the most extreme factory Camaro ever built exists. Gibb approached Vince Piggins in the summer of 1968 wanting a purpose-built NHRA drag car, and the result was COPO 9560 — the all-aluminium ZL1 427.
The racing angle reportedly began by accident: one of Gibb's own employees bought a Z/28 and started winning locally, which is a long way from commissioning the rarest Camaro of the first generation.
What made it possible was COPO — Central Office Production Order — GM's mechanism for special fleet and dealer orders outside the normal catalogue, and the route dealers used to get big-block power into a Camaro past GM's own internal displacement policy. Gibb went to Vince Piggins with a specific request and Piggins found the paperwork to make it happen.
Gibb's order is also why Dick Harrell built competition automatic 427 Novas — those came out of the same COPO order and were used to establish NHRA's automatic class.
The full COPO story is in the rare and significant cars and the first generation.
Key beats
- Fred Gibb Chevrolet, La Harpe, Illinois, opened 1948
- Dealer of record for the original COPO 9560 ZL1 order
- 50 of the 69 ZL1 Camaros built went to Gibb