Testing the Pack Alpha of Muscle Cars Ro McGonegal THE REAL DEAL Dragstrip testing a Camaro ZL1 in 1969. THE 2012 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 has a heavy load to bear. Its model designation, borrowing the General Motors option code for one of the most storied V-8 engines of the muscle car's glory days, sets lofty expectations among those who lived through Detroit's horsepower wars. In truth, by the time the original ZL1 engine arrived in a limited run of bare-bones Camaro coupes for the 1969 model year, the muscle car craze was already doomed. Still, the car was remarkable: what looked like a 6-cylinder brown bag from the outside, with nothing, save for the bulge of its cold-air ZL2 hood, to give it away, was actually powered by an all-aluminum brute rumored to produce as much as 500 horsepower. But what really set the ZL1 cars apart from every other street-legal machine of the era was the option listed on window stickers as a "high performance unit." Selecting that engine added a staggering $4,160.15 to the window sticker of the $2,727 Camaro. The ZL1 Camaro of 1969 came to be because Fred Gibb Chevrolet in La Harpe, Ill., took the plunge and ordered 50 examples of what promised to be a drag racer's dream come true. At the time, the industry was seeking modernity and nothing spoke more of the future than an all-aluminum engine, especially a big V-8 that had grown from racing roots. It should be noted that the race-only Can-Am engine blocks had cylinders that did not use iron liners, and they were fitted with dry-sump oiling systems. So the more accurate lineage of the ZL1 was actually the irascible L88, though with aluminum replacing cast iron as the basis for its cylinder block. Here was a 427-cubic-inch big-block that weighed about the same as an iron small-block. For a Chevrolet loyalist, it was the epitome of the genre. The ZL1 Camaros of 1969 existed only because of a loophole in G.M."s immense corporate bureaucracy. Otherwise limited to the 396 cubic-inch engine by corporate edict, these cars were produced using a special fleet order process known internally as the Central Office Production Order, or COPO, normally used for equipment on commercial vehicles like trucks or police car fleets. Common equipment like air-conditioning or power windows carried the designation of a Regular Production Option, or RPO. The official production total of ZL1 Camaros in 1969, for COPO 9560AA (manual transmission) and 9560BA (automatic) cars, was 69 units. Then a freshman reporter at an enthusiast magazine, Super Stock and Drag Illustrated, I was dispatched to the shop of a drag racer, Dick Harrell, in Kansas City, Mo. The first ZL1 became Harrell's Pro Stock racecar. Another car there, COPO No. 5, was mine to "test." As the first auto journalist to pound the pedals of the most powerful Chevrolet yet built, I had no idea what to expect, so I was conservative. Even so, driving this car was like trying to balance a piano on beer bottles. I could almost hear the minuscule tires weep. The test car was not exactly as the factory had built it. The engine was fitted with tubular exhaust headers, replacing restrictive standard plumbing. The engine was tuned accordingly, with optimum settings for ignition, carburetion and valve clearance. The leaves of the rear springs had been clamped to forestall the inevitable wheel-hop, and COPO No. 5 was fitted with 6.5-inch wide racing slicks. From the article I wrote some 40 years ago: "the car felt quite unruly every time I stabbed the throttle." Indeed. At the time of testing, the odometer registered about 50 miles; half of that had been accumulated on the drive to Kansas City International Raceway. With the listed modifications, No. 5 skated to an 11.64 quarter mile at 122 m.p.h. A completely stock ZL1 with street tires, closed exhaust and intact smog equipment ran low 13-second times at about 110 m.p.h. The bottom line of the window sticker on a 1969 ZL1 Camaro, with its mandatory heavy-duty equipment, ran over $7,000; recent sales of authentic cars have been in the $400,000 vicinity. Whether that history will be repeated when Chevrolet delivers the 2012 COPO Camaro - this time a racetrack-only model - is something that won't be known for decades.