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Chevy’s original 1969 COPO Camaros are performance legends. Built as high-performance machines to dominate at the drag strip, the COPO name still has meaning, and after more than 50 years of building the brand, it appears as if Chevy is continuing that legacy.
A rumbling V8 soundtrack was played in a brief video posted to Chevrolet Performance’s social channels, accompanied by a date: 7.30.21. That’s today for the astute timekeepers among you, so it seems like we’ll be in for something special rather soon.
For those who don’t know, the COPO Camaro was informally introduced in 1969 during the height of the muscle car era. A lightweight, more powerful version of the iconic vehicle built specifically for the track, they were meant to take on the Mopars and Cobra-engined Fords in NHRA Stock Eliminator drag racing. Today, the original aluminum-engined, 7.0-liter monsters are incredibly rare and valuable.
COPO stands for Central Office Production Order. It was an ordering tool typically used by dealerships to make changes to fleet vehicles—like police cars—before delivery. One enterprising dealer from Illinois named Fred Gibb, however, used the system to piece together a slew of high-performance muscle cars that led to the original COPO Novas and Camaros. Today, the COPO name is synonymous with performance as a result, and Chevy uses the branding exclusively on its most high-performance muscle cars built for the quarter-mile.
It’s unclear what time the new COPO will be unveiled today, and as far as the specifications of this new car go, we don’t know that either. We’ll report the precise specs when the car is unveiled, but one thing is for sure; it definitely sounds like a classic cross-plane crank V8 sits under the hood.
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