I have been working on the real cars and digging stuff (car and race car stuff) out of my various garages! I have done zero Chevrolet or Corvette research since maybe the summer of any intensity! I always pull out old magazines and books to read, and sometimes write some notes! I posted in the Tri-carb thread, my latest path chasing the 427 drop into a Camaro and who was first! Dana did it in the fall of 1966, and Si don't think that had anything to do with Bill Thomas, but his personal project inspired that! I am trying to get a date on Grumpy Jenkins doing a 427 drop also! I should be able to nail all of this down!

I have out a Berger 1967 catalog and low and behold it shows the 427 HD stuff and the actual 1967 OTC L88 stuff, the generic aluminum heads for L-71, and the souped up Aluminum heads for an L88. All of the missing links in one catalog! I have the 1967-1/2 Nickey catalog and I posted some shots of that here earlier in this old thread, but it is missing some stuff and somewhere in another thread I pictured the infamous blank pages with special disclaimer in that very same catalog, if my memory serves me right! But Berger was able to go to publishing a hair later than Nickey, and had the opportunity to include the 1967 OTC L88 offerings in its catalog, so timing to print ousted Nickey, who was the largest and prototype Chevrolet HiPo Parts outfit in our entire Country at that moment in time! That did switch as the business model to the Motion (Rosen) plan and model and the press they were getting in print (Schorr), switched who became the favored son operation of Chevrolet Brass! The torch was passed from Nickey to Motion! But Motion got their business model from copying the Ace Wilson Poncho Royal Pontiac guys! Motion even tried to out Poncho the Poncho experts with his Top Cat kit, which made even the Ram Air IV Bobcat even badder a$$! PS the hot GTO test, was not a 421, but a 428 with the baddest Bobcat tune!

Historically, the Chevrolet HiPo Dealership Network was created by Word of Mouth recommendations! Chevrolet in its haste to improve on their imagine and reputation for quality and performance as Ford was just crowned World Champions with their Cobras and a Cobra Daytonas, next into the GT-40 program, the quickest way to select who was who was by recommendation! So take like Bill Thomas and let's make him a hub contact- he sold cars to Allen Green and Dick Harrell, so on and on! So guys like these were the basis for who was considered to be worthy to get the special parts and be connected in! Thus guys like Yenko, Harrell, Smokey, Jenkins, Thompson, Etc. recommended friends and connections creating the early Chevrolet Parts Performance Dealerships Program conceived in 1965, and technically born and launched in 1966. These dealerships also, got preference usually in ordering special performance cars!

The timing was suddenly this stuff got to these higher end Hi-Performance Parts selected dealerships! They could not peddle these parts unless they could prove they had qualified individuals to market, explain them, and sell them. Allen Green Chevrolet and gang was one of those groups of selected dealership outlets for the 1966 formalized HiPo parts network. The 1965 year is a little sketchy historically, but people like Bill Thomas, and others were helping the Chevrolet insiders decide as to what would be made available! Other than just a few prototype cars out the door, the 1966 racers were built up of special select component kits to these very select only chosen groups and their dealerships! In the package to kit a racer could be an M22, Transistor ignitions, Gear drive cams, cross drilled crankshafts, 12.5:1 slugs, the latest heads, etc etc and these cars got built up! And they hit the tracks! I do believe the 1967 Dana Chevrolet L88 LeMans Race Car was not a production L88, but a kit sent to Dana as a package and the car was built up from a car they picked which had a wide Single black slalom era stripe over its paint job. That L88 was built from a special shipped of very now rare and very special parts as a kit!!!!

I dont know if anyone remembers the big appearance of Nickey here on the Westcoast peddling it's high performance Chevrolet goods! My Dad took us as kids to that event, as he was a direct mail marketing guy and had Car performance outfits as his Clients! But at that show, they had like celebrities at there display as guests like the Dan Blocker guy from Bonanza fame and his special Nickey sponsored USRRC racer! But others there signing autographs, as Chevrolet Parts were being peddled to the Amateur racers and the public! Thus Nickey Chevrolet of Chicago meets Hollywood in 1967! And Bill Thomas was there that day! I was six years old at that show!!!!! For me learning car trivia and facts at age 6/7 was on par with other kids showing their prowess in memorizing the multiplication tables! At age 7 or I remember slightly younger, if I met Dan Gurney, I could tell him his own race stats or those of Jimmy Clark! So following Dad around, or wandering the Can Am pits at Riverside on my Coppertone 1963 Schwinn Stingray, I would ride up to a John Surtees or Roger Penske Lola and ask the crew what HP Traco had given them!

Ought oh! I just shared breaking news! I somewhere on this forum posted a picture of this car (the 1967 LeMans racer in the raw, build just getting started) from private pictures I have collected over time. Not seen by the public prior to my posting- the one where Guldstrand is taking his drill to the hood! Someone energetic can search down my picture on our forum I shared and move it to here! I am lazy today! Thus I suspect a few more of those super early ones were built up with kits also, like the DX racer also! The Delorenzo car I think was rolled down the production line and was a supervised build, where these special parts were installed direct from the engineers, and the Towers green prototype was the engineering test car (just for the engine drop), as it was lacking the J-56 brakes! Thus technically not an L88, as that was an entire package essentially, but so formally count it as the 21st L88 car, even though technically not.

Let me move my tri carb post here, as we just re-activated these topics and this thread! The Mods love when we do this! The history is better condensed if we don't start new threads and fracture it all up in different spots on the forum!

And Bowtieshop, I haven't helped much in the few email exchanges we have had, except to give you ideas as to the questions to ask of a Gary and the like type of guys that were involved! I have a nack for jarring old obscure memories loose of their cobwebs, with down and dirty questions that lead to an oh ya moment! But armed with bits and pieces of scattered history, we can draw things out, that have been long forgotten! I have struggled questioning some of these famous old timers in that some instead of looking at the questioning as a search for history and a true compliment to them (that they are being asked or interviewed), some see it as an attack on them! Or their memories are so far removed from back in the day, that it can be a disturbing experience to be asked about things that they no longer have a recollection about! The guy I talked to the most was like Guldstrand (but others also) and he had pat stories! If you hit a buzz word or topic, off he ran and you had to reel him back in if you wanted to get questions answered! But it was sure fun just shutting up and listening, even though he had injected some whopper tall tales into his stories! I had one shot at Smokey Yunick similarly when I was searching for some stuff, and I bought some stuff from Grumpy Jenkins and that gave me a momentary license to delve into history with him! I was a customer of the Traco shop, and prior visited as a teenager with my Father who had work done there also! And I have actually walked the hollowed shop of Bill Thomas as a kid, etc. and so when I run into these types, I always try to get a question or two answered that I have! But still too much "history mystery" exists on all of this stuff! Maybe one day, I can devote more time, as I have little free time! And I waste a lot of that lately on PRC or shopping ebay!
I was out at Porsche events this last weekend and ended up in two conversations with two famous Porsche guys,and wow to be an audience of one for a few stories is super cool! I talked about the late 935 hot rod builds! The Silhouette IMSA racers, the final renditions of the true Production based Group 5 racers! The ultimate 911 derivatives!!!! I felt honored, and then I was charged $27.50 for three hours of parking in the garage next to the LAX Hilton, which put a damper on the stories I was committing to memory, from famous guys that lived it!

Ps I do have all of my Race grids and programs out, and have actually put them in date order, but what a horde of literature! I have over a thousand on my dining room table stacked up, not including periodicals like Competition press or other! So for three months, I have stared at the literature mess preventing me from not eating on the sofa, and I want to go thru and improve my National and Regional race records, while keeping an eye out for a Allen Green and many other outfits racing entries! Hope to do that before I die!

I will put this here in this thread from the other thread as putting together the timeline of all that was happening sometimes can get unlocked by facts or happenings elsewhere in Chevrolet involvement with racing, or other car platforms like the Camaro -

""""I just wonder if this is one that came from the Yunick sale and ended up on this car!

Again, I am trying to remember what I have in the way of literature that talked about this manifold!

And FYI, I have been cataloging stories and facts better in the modern, so I do less winging it on history sharing from memory!

Ps what I am about to write, I am still proofing it and adding and editing, inserting dates, etc., so this is the real rough outline of my notes. A few here, will be able to throw in on this, as many in this thread are some of the good historian enthusiasts like I try to be, and good researchers with merit!

I just was writing the actual history of who and in what order Camaros were getting 427s essentially going thru to, the Vince Piggens end of things and even Grumpy Jenkins doings, Thomas, Dana, Harrell, Nickey, Yenko, Gibbs, and others!. Naturally Harrell's family and Valerie who I have met at a book signing and talked to is claiming Dick her Father was the first, but he bought Novas built by Thomas (Bad Bascom was the first and then one of Bill Thomas' 427 cars). Bill Thomas essentially educated Dick Harrell on 427 drops! Bill Thomas basically proofed and contributed to the basic 396/427 Manuals! Bill had a line of big block headers done with Doug for earlier Chevrolets, and he dropped a 427 in one (a Camaro), plus did the 1967 Hot Rod 427 Camaro that got Nickey's attention! They already had joint sponsorship on Dick Harrell's Nova Match Race Car. Dick Harrell subsequently was the guy doing it for Nickey, the grunt work on these conversions! Then Dick did a deal with Yenko to get his racing backed, and 25 1967 cars were done together (work by Dick)! Yenko never really did honestly much, but found the talent of others to do his thing! He had RST do the Corvairs and Harrell do the 427s! He wasn't much of an actual engineer or wrench (but could tune and drive), so he talked Chevrolet into helping him by dropping those engines thru the COPO program. They ended up getting Lawyers (Yenko and Harrell against one another) and split and Dick now had his own shop from that initial deal, then relocated to KC and peddled some more cars through various dealerships, then Fox pointed Gibb toward Harrell and they went down their path together doing special tuner cars!
Some claim Bill Thomas did the early Dana cars, but I am pretty studied up on Dana Chevrolet, as two of our family cars are from them, the 1968 a Special Tuner build car from Dale Armstrong! Dana did get the idea from Bill thou!

I also was still going down the road on the 1966 HD engines (pre-L88s) and the 1967 L88 program itself. I got the Nickey/Thomas 1967 catalog devoid of the L88 pages, as they had the parts, but not in time for publication! But low and behold, my Berger 1967 catalog has both families of 1967 L88 engines and parts (not 1968 stuff either), and also the carry over 1966 HD race stuff too! As the Nickey part numbers can be converted to the GM numbers, the Berger look similar! Some pages kind of mimic the Nickey style!

But on this Tri-Carb cool stuff! Thanks for sharing!""""

Ok I lost the participation, so many of you know me and I will ramble on alone!

It is not looking like Bill Thomas did the first 427 engine drop in a Camaro!!!!!

What appears to to have happened in history was a Production prototype car made its way in like May 66 to the Arizona GM proving grounds. Then that car was rerouted after some press releases to Bill Thomas by I suspect Vince Piggens himself. The engine drop done at this time was with a 396 engine!!!!!!!! And that is a car shown in some famous shots like with the Parachutes opening, along with other shots of the engine install! Thus the motor mounts for big blocks to be installed in the coming Camaro was already in his hands. He also had a big block header of his own design that he commissioned for construction by Doug for 396 drop in the 55-57 Chevy cars! Thus that design got tweaked in this 396 installation! I have to dig out those Magazines out of my collection, but I think M/T and PHR ran stories on this car!
Now the first production cars did hit the Dealerships in September 1966. I do believe Dana Chevrolet might have gotten one of the first or actually might have been the earliest in August! These were L-48 350 w/ 295 hp rides. So from the press on Bill Thomas, they consulted with him to build a direct competitor car for the Shelby GT-500. Remember some of the staff was ex-Scarab and ex-Shelby American employees! PS Dana Chevrolet's new HIPo Center across and down the street from the main dealership was peddling also other brands occasionally of performance cars and did deals on the ISO Grifo, and some Shelby cars also, handled two Yenko Stingers also, out to customers! The famous Drag Racer and later Top crew chief- Dale Armstrong was bought in. He was Match Racing the White Chevrolet Redondo Beach sponsored Blue Nova and moonlighting at Torrance CA's 10,000 RPM shop on Torrance.Boulevard! I have been there many a time when my dear old Dad was drag racing his 1957 Corvette and then his 1964 Coupe in C/SP class in those years! He was friends of Guldstrand as they both were C1 racers and friends with Dale Armstrong when we lived in Torrance! But Dana Chevrolet bought Dale into the Hi-Performance Center to work. Dale was a direct competitor to the likes of Dick Harrell driving the bought Bill Thomas Race Cars built Nova with I think a 396 at first, then upgraded to the 427, and not sponsored by a Nickey at first, but later. Thus Dick Harrell and Bill Thomas were already connected, prior going back to Dick taking an interest in buying Bill's Corvette IRS Diff road race setup 1962 Nova (Bad Bascom) and turning it loose on the Drag Match racing scene. Thus Bill hooked Dana Chevrolet up with the components (motor mounts and headers) and the first actual 427 engine drop was done in the fall of 1966. Then two months later, the Nickey/Thomas Camaro was done, and Dick Harrell was there doing it at Bill's Anaheim shop together. And this is a different Red car, than the 396 car, as it has a too high serial number! When this car came up for auction at the high end bull$hit artists auctions, they wrote it up as the very first 427 installed car period! But naturally they stretch the bull$hit always! Typical investor crowd crap! They always got their stories just off in fact and truth! And Valerie Harrell wants to sue everyone, for Bill Thomas getting the credit, but the truth is they did it together! That car went back with Harrell to Nickey and became the Press baby for Nickey Hi-Performance. Dick Harrell and crew built them for East Coast and Mid Country customers and Bill Thomas for the West Coast! But even a funny thing happened, many East Coast "Racer" or racer guys wanted a Bill Thomas built car (and most of these went to the tracks in the Eliminator Classes of AHRA and NHRA, while many West Coast enthusiasts and others from the lower 48 from the Nickey ads bought theirs from Nickey! Plus Nickey offered a one way plane ride to Chicago for any purchaser! So if you want to get a Nickey/Thomas 427 Camaro, you will get this buying tip first hand from me, look for Camaro Racers in those early 1967 year! That is were these cars are hiding! So you guys now have the clue!

The Race on Sunday, Buy on Monday thing was kind of becoming a Ford thing, as Chevrolet was officially not Racing! Nickey coined the motto of their own, "Order on Monday, Pickup on Thursday!"

OK there is a lot more, but I am tired of typing the story! But thinking about paralleling in the Corvette with Zora and loyalists in, with their rival Chevrolet and Vince Piggens and group!