COPO Camaro, Chevelle & Nova: Chevrolet's Ultimate Muscle Cars
By Matt Avery
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About this ebook
Retrace the history of how Don Yenko and other performance-minded individuals used a loophole in GM's COPO program to create the ultimate Camaros, Chevelles, Novas and more, despite a corporate racing ban.
Chevy muscle car aficionado and author Matt Avery scoured archives and tracked down owners and personnel involved in the program to deliver a comprehensive story and complete guide to the COPO cars. The COPO muscle car and racing program produced a storied and remarkable journey, and Avery captures all these facets in this entertaining and revealing history.
While few knew about this back-channel program at the time, it is now recognized as the origin of GM's top muscle cars. Dedicated Chevy racers and car owners were determined to compete head to head with Mopar and Ford at the racetrack and on the street. But in order to do so, they needed to circumvent the corporate racing ban and resolve the restriction of 400-ci engines in intermediate vehicles. The COPO program was designated for fleet vehicles such as taxicabs, but at the peak of the muscle car wars, it was used to build the ultimate high-performance Chevy muscle cars.
Don Yenko became the COPO muscle car program champion. He ordered the Corvair through the COPO program and created the Corvair Stinger to mount a SCCA road race campaign. From these humble beginnings, the road map for creating the ultimate Camaros, Chevelles, and Novas was established. Factory Camaro V-8s came equipped with the 350 small-block or 396 big-block, which had to compete with the Mustang Cobra Jets and Mopar Wedge and Hemi cars. In response, building the big-block Camaro through the COPO program was devised. At the factory, Camaros were fitted with the 396 engines and shipped to dealers where the 427s were installed in the cars.
From 1967 to 1969, the factory and dealers installed eight different 427 engines, including the all-aluminum ZL1 427. Later on, others used the road map to build COPO Novas and Chevelles to similar spec with similar results. The COPO performance car program did not end with these muscle cars. Yenko even ordered several hundred Vegas through the COPO program, so they could be fitted with turbochargers and raced in SCCA competition.
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- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very detailed history of the COPO cars. Would recommend reading this to any Chevy enthusiast.
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COPO Camaro, Chevelle & Nova - Matt Avery
INTRODUCTION
Aloophole. A backdoor. A grey area. In a word: COPO. I am specifically referring to the COPO muscle cars of the 1960s and early 1970s that, officially, never should have been. These cars were built as a workaround to skirt strict corporate mandates banning their very existence. Grisly racing tragedies and negative press from too-fast highway incidents gave strong indications that building COPOs, or similar vehicles, would be tough, if not impossible. Chevrolet controlled the new-car marketplace and pushing race cars was a dangerous game. If Chevrolet continued to grow, the government was threatening to intervene.
But thanks to a culture where competition was king, street image mattered, and going fast moved inventory, COPO cars were quietly slipped out of factories and let loose on strips and streets. Despite being ground-pounding race cars through and through, they were amazingly available for sale at local dealerships, parked next to pickups and compacts. It was all a wild ruse, but it worked. Dreamed up and driven by a collaboration of diehard leadfoots and passionate office insiders, these legendary race-ready automobiles still stir hearts and souls today. You’ve certainly heard of the models Camaro, Chevelle, and Nova; when these street icons were given some COPO muscle magic, they became nothing short of motoring legends.
COPO: What Was It?
COPO is an acronym that stands for Central Office Production Order. It was Chevrolet’s process of handling special, out-of-the-ordinary circumstances for new vehicle orders. A 1968 internal Chevrolet Introductory Sheet initiating the engineering center staff to COPO defined it as: A Central Office Production Order is the medium employed in the issuance of a specification for a given type of equipment being furnished on special order to a customer whose specifications requirements differ from those normally furnished for basic production, or a combination of basic production together with equipment furnished as a regular production option.
According to the GM Heritage Center’s lead archivist, Christo Datini, COPO was established in the years following World War II. It was essentially a ticket submitted for a special request that was directed to GM’s Central Office in Detroit. The primary use was for fleet vehicle sales, such as taxi companies, telephone companies, police departments, trucking firms, municipalities, and the like. Vehicles used in these applications could be specced with such components as heavy-duty suspensions or stain-proof interiors to make them better suited for the extended use and abuse they were sure to encounter in their daily travels.
RPO Versus COPO
During the 1960s, Chevy employed a regular production option (RPO) structure to its new car ordering system. In this structure, a base vehicle would be offered and then any available option that could be made for it was called an RPO. These would have been researched, designed, engineered, and marketed by General Motors for optimal market penetration.
Individual RPO options were designated by a letter and number combination. This combination appeared on a vehicle’s window sticker, reminding the customer how much each cost. It was also found on the vehicle’s build sheet, or what General Motors called the Broadcast Sheet. This sheet of paper was essentially a master list that stayed with the vehicle as it moved down the assembly line. Factory workers glanced at it to see what parts to install. For example, a customer told the sales associate what they wanted on a brand-new car and the order would go in. If you ordered a 1969 Camaro and wanted power windows (RPO A31), front accent striping (RPO DX1), and a heavy-duty radiator (RPO V01), it would go on the Broadcast Sheet. Several weeks later, the special ordered vehicle would be delivered.
COPO: How It Worked
The COPO process was different. It worked by allowing deviations to the configuration and combination of the available options on one condition. When a special request came through, the first internal action General Motors took was to have it evaluated to determine if the base vehicle needed a design change or additional parts in order to make it work. From there, the Special Equipment Design Group at the Engineering Center in Warren, Michigan, came up with an estimate for any tooling, fabricated assemblies, or additional research and development (R&D).
Next, the COPO Specification’s Group tallied up the costs, weighed the benefits, and compiled a list of all the parts that needed to be sourced. Then, the COPO Specification’s Group accumulated a master material sheet called an Engineering Parts List. On it would be all the part numbers, or RPOs, that needed to be removed from the base vehicle and the new ones that were going on. If a request was green-lit, a design work order was initiated and given a several digit COPO number that had the part or groupings of parts that were going on the vehicle. The Project Engineering and the Special Vehicle Group each signed off and the order went through.
The needed expenditures were spread out internally and absorbed across the budget. Records detailing COPO orders are very rare, but some examples have surfaced. One instance was a Forest Preserve Municipality special order for a batch of 1957 Chevy sedan deliveries. The vehicles were made with the rear hatch from a sedan delivery installed on a wagon with windows. When the vehicles were delivered, there wasn’t any extra badging to identify the COPO process, and that term was buried in the paperwork. The vehicles were still covered under a factory warranty and could be serviced at any Chevrolet service department.
This process had never been done before, so few dealerships connected the dots to figure out that the COPO process could be used to build high-performance machines. Dealerships that may have seen the possibility passed because of the lengthy turnaround time and hassle involved. Another factor was that many performance-oriented dealerships had the resources to do their own modifications.
Hot-Rodding and Racing Get a Bad Rap
From an automotive standpoint, the years leading up to the muscle era of COPO (1965–1972) were volatile. Fast cars were an extremely popular but polarizing subject with an abundance of mixed feelings. These feelings were quickly becoming mostly negative because of over-the-top hot-headed drivers. Hot rodders had developed an image of being hooligans and hoodlums. Street racing was common and the participants were rowdy, out of control, and itching to go, often with disastrous effects. In 1955, one out of every four traffic deaths in the United States was caused by young speeders, despite only representing 15 percent of all registered drivers.
Some enthusiasts tried to change that negative image. One wrote in a 1959 suburban Chicago Daily Herald editorial piece that the hot rod industry contributes valuable technical information
to the automotive industry. A real hot rod is a car that is lending itself to experimental development for the betterment of safety, operation, and performance, not merely a stripped down or highly decorated car.
It didn’t help that all through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, racing deaths, injuries, and crashes were common. Safety protocols were crude and elementary, and mishaps, mostly fatal, were frequent.
The most horrific accident took place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans when a speeding Mercedes catapulted at 150 mph into the air, flipping down a tightly packed row of spectators. In a matter of seconds, scores of bystanders were killed and many more were injured. More carnage occurred in nearby Italy at the treacherous endurance race Mille Miglia (1,000 Mile). Back in the States, NASCAR wasn’t without its share of incidents. From 1952 to 1967, 14 drivers were killed on NASCAR tracks.
Fallout: AMA Ban
In the wake of all this turmoil, automakers made a major announcement in 1957 that separated themselves from the chaos. At the June Automobile Manufacturers Association (AMA) annual meeting in Detroit, the group drafted an unofficial agreement to back out of organized auto racing and motorsports of any kind. They also agreed to de-emphasize speed in advertising campaigns.
The AMA was a trade group with members being top brass from all the major automakers. Present for the decision were the chairmen and presidents of Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, Studebaker, and American Motors Corporation. Most of the car companies had been backing race teams for years, although it was usually referred to as experimental groups.
Citing the 1955 Le Mans disaster and other incidents, the AMA withdrew its sanction from every type of auto racing. The board announced that it unanimously recommends to the member companies engaged in the manufacture and sale of passenger cars and stations wagons that they not participate or engage in any public contest, competitive event, or test of passenger cars involving or suggesting racing or speed, including acceleration tests, or encourage or assist employees, dealers or other, or furnish financial, engineering, manufacturing, advertising, or public relations assistance.
Another act the AMA banned was supplying pace cars or any official cars in connection with any such contest, or test, directly or indirectly.
All of this was a recommendation from all the member companies and few believed it would be enforced. There was strong motivation for the car companies to get their act together, as rumors persisted of racing being banned outright. One long-time foe of the sport was Senator Richard Neuburger of Oregon, who, in 1955 and again in 1959, tried to get Congress to ban all automobile racing in the United States.
1957 Black Widow
Chevrolet wanted to toe the line, but it also wanted to keep its cars selling. To ensure its models stayed out front in racing, General Motors sneakily created the Southern Engineering and Development Corporations Operation (SEDCO) in 1957. SEDCO was merely a shadow company with minimal ties to Detroit, partly for brand image and partly for liability. Chevrolet hired a former Hudson race engineer by the name of Vince Piggins and sent him to Atlanta. Piggins helmed SEDCO, which was run as a subsidiary of Nalley Chevrolet, a large dealership in the area. Bare-bones 6-cylinder passenger cars were delivered to Nalley in the fall of 1956.
Veteran racer Rex White was at Nalley as part of the crew picking up the cars. At the time, White was driving for Chevrolet and worked at SEDCO. They [the cars] were business coupes—a cheap car sold as company cars,
said White. The whole deal was all about getting them to go fast.
He and other colleagues caravanned the black-and-white painted cars to East Point, Georgia, where SEDCO was headquartered. We rented a basement from a local body shop and set up shop there. There, we stripped them down and made them into race cars.
While White was a professional wheelman, he was also skilled with his hands. He focused on chassis work, installing roll bars, shock mounts, and sway bars in the cars. The team worked all winter installing factory parts that were all available from General Motors.
A guide was created detailing the changes that had been made to the cars so anyone could head to his or her local Chevrolet parts counter and build one themselves. The guide was then mailed to more than 411 Chevrolet dealers. The Black Widow debuted in February 1957 at NASCAR’s Daytona Beach and Road Course, where it performed extremely well, taking home the Manufacturers’ Trophy. Chevrolet wasted no time spreading the news, taking out full-page ads proclaiming, Chevy is America’s ‘hot’ car—officially!
next to a picture of a 1957 with a checkered flag waving in the foreground.
After the AMA ban was signed, General Motors ordered SEDCO to be shut down. White remembers going into work one June day to find a lock and chain around the doors. He was informed that he had been fired. It wasn’t all bitter; wishing the racers success, the cars (along with a tow vehicle) were given to the drivers. It’s just a shame that Chevy wasn’t able to go the full year with it,
recalls White. We would have won the championship. It would have been one hell of season.
1960s: Easing Back In
As hard as the automakers tried to pretend to follow the mandates set forth in the AMA ban, no one was fooled. Most people knew the automakers continued their support of racing and speed in advertising. A congressional investigation kicked off again in the spring of 1962, spearheaded by Representative Oren Harris from Arkansas. He was quoted as saying that the House subcommittee on health and safety would look into the matter as soon as possible
and asked the auto executives to furnish his committee with copies of all recent advertisements that stressed horsepower and speed. Tight-lipped representatives for the auto firms would not comment except to say, We are conforming with the request and getting together examples of our advertising.
Over-the-line ads included such pieces as a Chevrolet ad stating the 409 hp of a new big V-8 and a Dodge ad proclaiming the Dart 440 handles like a perfectly set-up race car.
Fears again lingered that Congress would step in and federally limit racing and the horsepower.
Horsepower War
This anxiety lingered as all the automakers entered a new contest to create the largest engine size and highest horsepower figure. With each passing year and the success of racing, the brands kept inching closer and closer to all-out speed. Each brand was clamoring to claim the crown of the largest cubic inch displacement, boasting the most horsepower. They kept reaching but wouldn’t toot their own horn.
In 1959, Ford quietly debuted an engine capable of 360 hp, the highest to that point. A Kansas City Star report stated that there was a time when introduction of such an engine would have been accompanied by blares from the publicity trumpets
but all that fanfare was quieted because of the AMA ban. Pontiac, Plymouth, Ford, and Chevrolet all offered a 400-plus-hp engine and one overzealous engineer, seeing no end in sight, predicted 700-hp supercharged passenger car engines before too long.
Ford Caves In
Finally, Ford had enough. In the summer of 1962, Henry Ford II (also the president of the AMA) announced the brand was back into auto racing, this time officially. Ford cited the reason was that the resolution had been broken so often that, It has come to have neither purpose nor effect. Accordingly, we are withdrawing from it.
Chrysler followed, stating that with Ford’s withdrawal, it considers the resolution inoperative.
General Motors made it clear that the brand continues to endorse the soundness of the principle stated in the AMA resolution.
Some were still nervous about such brash actions. Roy Abernethy, president of American Motors, spoke to the Detroit Adcraft Club in January 1963. He stated that those firms which had returned to auto racing and are touting speed in their ads despite congressional pressure are flirting with the likelihood of a stiff government crackdown.
GM’s Unwavering Stance
Perhaps the greatest illumination on GM’s position going into the 1960s comes from a news conference held on February 18, 1963. Chairman Frederic G. Donner and company president John F. Gordon fielded a battery of questions from a dogged group of media and journalists. One reporter asked, In Washington, it is generally an accepted fact that the government is unhappy with the big share of the market that General Motors accounts for today in the United States, and yet General Motors’s share apparently is getting bigger all the time. What effect does this knowledge of the government’s being unhappy have on your operation?
Donner responded by questioning if the government being unhappy was fact, but he also confirmed that for 1962 General Motors accounted for 51.9 percent of the total passenger car market.
Another reporter asked about the policy that General Motors instituted in 1957, if it was still in effect, and if there had been any violations of it. Gordon answered that yes, there had been violations, but that there have been violations of policy by everybody in the business.
He stated the policy was still in effect, internally and in the AMA too.
This renewed commitment and anti-racing position was one General Motors was going to maintain for the next couple of years. Even though its competitors were dropping the flag and returning to racing, General Motors was adamantly going to stay out of it, at least officially. That stance changed once a few key individuals at the dealership level saw an opportunity to use protocols already in place to build performance-oriented cars that could skillfully slip between the cracks.
CHAPTER 1
YENKO CORVAIR STINGER
A REAR-ENGINED COMPACT BECOMES A ROAD RACE WEAPON
Chevrolet Corvair Stinger
Total Production: 126
Dana Production: 3
Total Left: 70 (estimated)
While Chevrolet was proceeding gingerly around the racing scene, many outsiders were happily campaigning their products all-out at tracks around the country. One of those passionate enthusiasts was Don Yenko. Don’s parents, Frank and Martha, owned Yenko Chevrolet, a bustling dealership nestled in sleepy Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, about 20 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Don graduated from Penn State with a degree in Business Administration and served in the US Air Force before jumping into the family business. In 1957, he started racing Corvettes, quite successfully. By 1961, Don had attacked and conquered just about every race course in the Eastern United States.
Clever Don Yenko took Chevrolet’s Corvair and crafted it into an all-American racer; one that could properly mix it up on the track with the best of them. Ed Cunneen owns this striking trio (YS-119, YS-001, and YS-107).
Don made a name for himself by racing and modifying Corvettes, and he used that high-octane experience to launch his Stinger effort. Here, two Stingers undergo track testing. Note the dealership’s field support truck, advertising Specialized Corvette Service
on the rear fender. (Photo Courtesy the Barr Collection)
Because of this, his reputation, as well as the dealership’s, grew. Don even helped form the Corvette Club of Western Pennsylvania, which was the largest of its kind in the country and still together today. That involvement paid big dividends when the vice president of Gulf Oil (headquartered in nearby Pittsburgh), Grady Davis, joined the club. In 1961, Davis agreed to sponsor two Corvettes in the 12-hour Grand Prix road race held in Sebring, Florida. Not only did he order the vehicles from Yenko Chevrolet, he hired Don to drive one of the cars. In 1962 and 1963, Don was ranked as the national Class B Production champion of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and even headed to Puerto Rico to compete in the Grand Prix there.
Yenko’s Corvette Center
While he enjoyed the intense wheel-to-wheel competition, Don was about sales. He leveraged the trackside publicity and credibility to push the store. As early as 1960, he ran ads offering Corvette Competition
tuning and repair, stating the crew at Yenko Chevrolet were fuel injection and carburetion specialists. He lumped these efforts into what he called the Yenko Corvette Service Center and began offering competition preparation for Corvettes. Don offered upgrades for owners wishing to compete in the SCCA races as well as other performance items for …the ultimate in Corvette competition preparation.
The dealership’s performance group rebuilt engines, polished cylinder heads, and installed heavy-duty front and rear springs and heavy-duty electric fuel pumps. Some parts were designed by the team and designated as such: there was as a YENKO roll bar, a YENKO Plexiglass windscreen, and a YENKO heavy-duty bumper tow bar. An estimate from 1962 for the full tuning works rang up at nearly $6,200 for a complete overhaul. To put it into perspective, a 1962 Corvette’s base price was around $4,200. Don focused on branding too and offered Corvette by Yenko
license plate frames to show off their handiwork. Rumor has it this move wasn’t well-received by Chevrolet. Protective of its model names, the carmaker asked him to stop using the frames.
Don had his fill of staring down the rear bumpers of Mustangs he was trailing on the track. He was determined to make the Corvair into a winning machine and turn the tables on the naysayers, who doubted its performance proficiencies.
Shelby Strikes: Mustang GT350
Yenko’s world (and the rest of the racing community) was shaken up in 1963 after seeing what Texas-tuner Carroll Shelby had cooked up and rolled out. Shelby unleashed his Ford V-8-powered, British-bodied AC Cobra onto the A and B Production road racing classes. The track weapon proved potent, placing first in A in 1963 and 1964 and earning Shelby quite the reputation.
By now, Ford was full-steam ahead with its racing program, continuing to roll out its Total Performance campaign. There were high hopes that the recently released Mustang would prance with the best on the country’s top tracks. Ford was shocked when the SCCA turned it down for classification. Because of its back seat, the Mustang was ruled a sedan and not suitable for competition. Ford contracted Shelby’s team to get the vehicle race-ready. Besides the back seat deal, there was another SCCA regulation for the production classes: 100 examples had to be produced to prove the vehicle was indeed production and not a small batch of one-offs. To manufacturers, the production class was key. Winning was winning, but winning with a vehicle that inspired spectators to buy street versions right off the showroom floor. Now that was truly winning.
In late 1964, Ford shipped the vehicles (sans back seat) to Shelby’s headquarters near the Los Angeles airport. He and his team worked their magic and had enough prepped for the SCCA to give them a green light and allow them to compete in the 1965 race season. The combination proved a winning formula. The Shelby GT350 R-Model nabbed the SCCA B/Production title away from Corvette. The year-end SCCA American Road Race of Champions (AARC) for A and B production categories looked like a Shelby parade as the Cobras and Shelby GT350 Mustangs galloped away with the first five finishes overall and the laurels for both A and B Production.
Shelby’s Bumper: Seeing the Need
Having gone toe-to-toe with Shelby’s speed steeds (and lost), Don’s wheels were spinning. He was tired losing, despite his Corvette having received a full overhaul in 1963. In his mind, the 1957 Corvette was the ultimate. He was growing more and more frustrated as the model’s curb weight kept climbing. In 1964, he voiced his frustration about the 1963 design. In June 1966, Don wrote a piece in Sports Car magazine, saying After repeatedly looking at the rear bumper of Mark Donohue’s [Shelby] Mustang, [he] decided the only way [he] could stay loyal to Chevrolet (they put food on my table) was to build my own car.
Looking across Chevy’s lineup, he settled on the Corvair, the brand’s compact offering. A 1966 Motor Trend article quoted Don as saying he had grown to deplore The trend of Detroit manufacturers to concentrate their design exercise on front-engine, nose-heavy, large-bore vehicles, the result of which is a fast-accelerating but poor handling machine.
Chevrolet had made some styling and suspension tweaks to the Corvair to help it stand up to some negative press. Seeing a unique window of opportunity, Don felt confident it would be the right platform to build on.
Don had his work cut out for him. According to Car and Driver, while the Corvair had been rallied successfully and the engine was reliable in drag racing, in road racing it tended to overheat. That was to be expected because the engine was mounted in the rear of the vehicle and air-cooled. The publication observed that it would be a stretch for the Stinger to compete successfully in Class D and would have been better suited for slower classes. To be fair, the article’s author remembers seeing Don race a few years earlier and remembers his fierce determination to win against overwhelming odds.
Working in Don’s favor, besides his tenacity, was that the Corvair had just undergone a redesign and updating for the 1965 model year. Part of that was a suspension upgrade, thanks to Ralph Nader’s poignant Unsafe at Any Speed. In his book, Nader criticized the Corvair for being prone to suspension related accidents. To alleviate the quickly mounting bad press, Chevrolet swapped out the rear swing axle suspension for a fully independent suspension. Like Ford and its Mustang, in 1964 (and again in 1965) Chevy submitted the two-door Corvair to the SCCA to get it classed in for competition in the Sports Car production class. Like Ford, Chevy was turned down on the grounds that because it had four seats it, too, was a sedan-based car. Despite having two doors and looking sporty, it still had two rows of seating.
Clever Don was fed up and frustrated with his losing streak. He saw an opening window of opportunity. It would take a ton of work, but he was willing to make the effort.
Choosing the Corvair
For 1966, Corvair was being offered as a base 500, a mid-range Monza, and a top-of-the line Corsa (which had just debuted in 1965). One of the biggest changes in this second-generation economy car, besides its continental styling, was its nimble, fully independent rear suspension, which was derived from the Corvette Sting Ray. Since 1960, the car’s rear suspension had been using a swing axle design, enhanced in 1964 with a camber compensating transverse leaf spring, mounted horizontally between the wheels.
Overall, the 1964 vehicle didn’t get high praise. Car and Driver remarked the Corvair was one of the nastiest-handling cars ever built,
saying the tail would give little warning that it was about to let go, and when it did, it let go with a vengeance few drivers could cope with. The rear wheels would lose traction, tuck under, and with the tail end jacked up in the air, the car would swing around like a three-pound hammer on a thirty-foot string.
For the 1965 model year, Chevy set out to rectify the negative press. The swing axles that only pivoted in the middle at the differential case were exchanged for a four-link suspension. Universal joins were mounted at each end of the axle halfshaft, allowing for greater flexibility.
Lower links were added, too, so when the car went over bumps, the wheels wouldn’t camber (or lean) out as before. As part of the overhaul, the front suspension got a new sway bar.
Don stated that the Corsa was engineered so soundly that it can be made completely race worthy without major rebuilding. The usual route of providing a ‘stiff as a board’ suspension, as is done on the Mustang and pre-1963 Corvettes, isn’t necessary in this case. The fully independent suspension system of the Corvair makes this compromise with handling unnecessary.
Don also saw a need for something like it in the SCCA. We felt that there is a need for American representation in the lower speed-potential car classes of the SCCA racing. Our sampling of public opinion substantiated this opinion. And the idea of being able to race an American car for a reasonable initial investment, and then be able to procure parts locally, is intriguing even to the most avid foreign car buff.
Power for the Corsa came from a reworked 161-ci air-cooled boxer 6-cylinder that was mounted in the rear of the car. It was fitted with four single-barrel Rochester carburetors and with redesigned heads, bigger valves, and improved porting that was good for a stout 140 hp.
Think Pink: Donna Mae Mimms
Don wasn’t alone in this quest to bring the Stinger to reality. He was joined by Donna Mae Mimms of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who was his self-employed public relations manager. She was a racer through and through, having mixed it up on the track with him in the early 1960s. In 1963, as a 20-year-old, she was crowned the American Road Race of Champions winner in H/Production class, making her the only female race driver to ever win a national road racing championship up to that point.
Her association with the Yenko team began when she stopped by the dealership to get her personal car serviced. Don found her bold personality, charm, and wit key assets, to say nothing of her driving skills, and he added her to his team. Donning