Chevy Introduces 2017 COPO Camaro at SEMA
Chevrolet’s COPO Camaro program got a grand restart back in 2012, but was originally based on the special-order high-performance Camaros that was designed to dominate the dragstrip back in 1969. COPO stands for Central Office Production Order, which was the process used by fleet managers to order the unusual combinations of options needed to create these vehicles.
Today at SEMA, Chevrolet unveiled its 2017 COPO Camaro show car (serial number 01 of 69). The superpowered Camaro features a supercharged 350 engine, custom Weld racing wheels, and a special “anodized” Hyper Blue Metallic exterior. In addition, the 2017 COPO Camaro comes with a lightweight coil-over strut front suspension, four-link rear suspension with double-adjustable coil-over shocks, Panhard bar, stabilizer bar, lightweight drag-race manual four-wheel disc brakes, custom manual steering rack, and more.
Under the hood, the COPO Camaro can have one of three engines from the LS and LT engine families, such as the supercharged 5.7-liter 350, a naturally-aspirated 7.0-liter 427, and an LT-based direct-injection 6.2-liter 376 engine. All of these are connected to an SFI-approved ATI TH400 three-speed automatic transmission.
Each COPO Camaro is built by hand starting with production hardware, and customers interested in buying one have to register at Chevrolet.com/COPO by December 15th. After that, a third party will randomly select customers from the pool, who will be contacted in the first quarter of 2017—this is opposed to the tactics of some other racecar sellers, who chose only the customers that they felt passed muster and showed loyalty.
The first 2017 COPO Camaro (on display at SEMA) will be auctioned at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction, with proceeds to benefit United Way, just like last year’s first COPO Camaro.
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