In the 1960s two of the big three, Chevrolet and Ford, each had their own secret weapons in the form of racecar drivers turned muscle car builders. Ford had the recently deceased Carroll Shelby modifying Mustangs for SCCA use and sale, whereas Chevy had the late Don Yenko modifying a wide array of their muscle cars, the most popular being the Camaro. Yenko also ran multiple Chevy dealerships where the bulk of his creations were sold.

In 1967 and 1968, Yenko was dropping 427 cubic-inch monsters from Corvettes into Camaro bodies and creating some of the most powerful Camaros of the era. One of Yenko?s crowning achievements came in 1969 when Yenko was tired of selling Camaros with limited warranties because of his modifications and convinced Chevy to add a 427-equipped Camaro to its special equipment ordering system, known as COPO.

This addition of the 427-equipped Camaro to COPO made it possible for Yenko to sell these cars with the GM-standard 5-year or 50,000-mile warranty. Yenko ordered a grand total of 198 of the Camaro 427s available from COPO. The total number of COPO Camaros produced and sold is unknown, but has been rumored as anywhere from 500 to 1,000.[...]