1-in-10 1969 Yenko Camaro Racer Last Seen in Public in 1976 Has Under 22k Original Miles

Here’s one – with a little under 22,000 original miles, looking sharper than it ever did throughout its sometimes tumultuous life.

Doug Perry is a well-known name in the high-performance Camaro circles, thanks to his exquisite taste in Yenko Super Cars. The plural is correct; the man owns not one but several classic go-like-hell unicorns from the great years of Chevrolet big-gun, off-the-showroom-floor performance. One of those cars made a guest star appearance at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals last fall.

The Oscars of classic cars in Rosemont, Illinois, is probably the high point of the year for Detroit’s finest street and track brawlers from half a century ago, with almost all piston-headed mavens swarming up north for the reunion. Naturally, this is the perfect occasion for Lou Costabile, the classic car vlogger from Chicago, Illinois, to grab his camera and shoot on sight.

That’s how Doug Perry’s 1969 Chevrolet Camaro Yenko came before the world for the first time since… 1976. The present owner bought it in 2019 from the man who got the racecar nearly half a century ago, after the Camaro changed hands several times, from one LeadFoot tribesman to the next. The story is quite fascinating: it was sold new in Indianapolis from Nankivell Chevrolet in May 1969.

The original buyer, a man named Richard L. Barratt – a professional drag racer and all-around gearhead – wanted a Yenko Super Car to run in the Super/Stock D class (7.70 to 8.69 lb/hp wight-to-power ratio). He must have been thoroughly impressed by the 1969 Yenko Camaro 427 test session event for Super Stock magazine on April 21, 1969, in the dealer’s hometown of Cannonsburg, PA. On that day, a demonstrator car with 8,000 miles on the odometer stopped the quarter-mile timer after 11.94 seconds from the start.

Blasting across the finish line at 114.5 miles per hour, the Chevy quickly prompted the track officials to halt all activities and check their instruments. Upon confirming the high-precision clocks were just fine, everyone turned their attention to the main star of the show – the nefarious big-block Bowtie pony car. The Camaro wore 8-inch Goodyear slicks on the rear, a hurriedly installed set of headers, and an AM radio.

The driver of that car noted that they could have gone a lot faster had it not been for the roughness of the clutch, which impeded him from power-shifting in the sweet-spot RPM range. The Yenko Camaro 427 was powered by the L72-code big-block seven-liter V8 (the iron motor). It came within three-tenths of a second behind a finely tuned ZL-1, armed with the legendary all-aluminum version of the same powerplant. Also, the ZL-1 had a professional drag racer behind the wheels.

No wonder ‘Tricky’ Ricky Barratt was taken aback by the new 1969 Camaro Yenko Super Car. He immediately removed all the Yenko badges, stripes, insignia, and whatever could identify the car as the brute it was and slapped a set of SS emblems on it. How many SLGP (Stoplight Grand Prix) racers have fallen victim to that mischief is what a lot of people would like to know.

Jim Nankivell, the owner of the dealership where this car was sold first, used it as a demo car (an eerie coincidence with the Super Stock vehicle used in April). After Rick Barratt got it, he had his fair share of fun on the street in and around his hometown of Indianapolis. Still, he was a strong competitor in the National Hot Rod Association. Subsequently, he enlisted the Camaro under the track name ‘Motivation.’

He ran it at Beech Bend, Raceway Park, Edgewater Dragway, Milan Dragway, Muncie Dragway, and others. The gallery has several photos showing the ‘Motivation’ in motion on the quarter-mile strips. The Olympic Gold ‘Motivation’ Yenko raced under that name until 1972, when Richard Barratt sold it. The following three owners kept the Camaro on the track before it ended up in the hands of a man who decided to put it back on the street in 1976.

Apart from being an all-out track athlete when new, this Camaro is one of the ten units sold with the Olympic Gold livery – the rarest color ordered on the 201 Yenko Camaros sold in 1969. That year marked the peak of the Cannonsburg Chevy cannonballs and also premiered the automatic Yenko Camaro. Previously, the Bowtie pony cars prepped by Don Yenko’s wrenching gremlins were all manuals.

Doug Perry’s example (the same one owned and raced by Tricky Ricky Barratt) happens to be equipped with a four-speed – and if that tranny could talk, we’d need a lot of internet real estate to fill with them. Amazingly, the big-block L-72 motor is the original unit, and it sports around 21,400 miles (or it did so in November 2024, when the video was made).

It was the first time Doug had taken it to a car show, despite owning it since 2019. The current owner knows his Yenko Camaros inside out, so this example isn’t new to him. As awesome as it is, it can’t hold a candle to the Perry crown jewel, a 1967 Yenko Camaro Super Car. What’s so special about that car, you say? Well, it’s the last ’67 Camaro the tuner built. In fact, it’s the next one after the last, so to speak.

After all the ’67 Yenko conversions were dispatched, a 19-year-old gearhead and his father walked into the showroom one day and asked for one. Fresh out of stock and with 1968 production not yet underway, Don Yenko devised a clever compromise. He duly presented the prospects with a 1967 SS396 automatic and offered to convert it to a 427 Super Car 450.

The numeral stood for the horsepower rating of the newly introduced 427-cubic-inch big-block. Probably because it was a bit of an overkill in the horsepower wars, Chevrolet soon retired the denomination and stuck with 425 hp so as not to outshine the Corvette. After driving it for 7,252 miles during the following six years, the original buyer parked it in a heated garage. He sold it to Doug in 2018—after nine years of back-and-forth.

Apart from being the last(est) 1967 Yenko Camaro, Doug Perry’s other sYc pony car is the only one documented to leave the dealership with a cowl-plenum air cleaner assembly. It also sports a Super Sport hood instead of the custom Yenko pieces used by the Cannonsburg lord of speed. And, with a $5,242 sticker price, it’s probably the most expensive (when new) ’67 Yenko Camaro in existence.