More on Dealer influence on the Musclecar Era

In the last post I talked about certain dealers across the country that offered option packages that weren't available from the Factory. Some of these packages resulted in the factories eventually offering these upgrades to the public. A couple examples would be the Hurst/Olds and the Yenko Camaros and Chevelles. For some reason, maybe pressure from insurance companies or government safety Nazis, GM had an edict that no A or F body car could have an engine over 400 cubic inches. This included Chevelles, GTOs, Cutlasses, and Camaros and Firebirds. That's why the largest optional engine in a Camaro or Chevelle was a 396, and the largest engine in a GTO or Firebird was a 400 Pontiac. Ditto for Olds and Buick. Century, Skylark and Cutlass / F85 models were limited to the 400 inch Buick and Olds engines. Meanwhile, Chrysler had no such restrictions. You could get a Road Runner, Charger or Super Bee with a 426 Hemi or a 440 V8. If their all stock, a 440 Road Runner has little to fear from a 396 Chevelle, or 389 or 400 GTO. This was not lost on the GM brass, but they didn't quite know what to do about it. George Hurst and others did. Hurst performance took the 455 out of the Toronado, added W30 heads and cam, special graphics,and a beefed up Turbo 400. Although only 515 were built in 1968, and 906 in 1969, the automotive press went wild. Don Yenko started offering 427 Corvette motors swapped into Camaros and Chevelles. Royal Pontiac got into the act by swapping 428 HO Gran Prix engines into GTOs and Firebirds. Carroll Shelby got tired of his 289 powered GT350 Mustangs getting dusted by big-block Camaros and Firebirds, so he took a 390 Mustang, and swapped in a 428 and called it the GT500.  Bob Tasca, owner of Tasca Ford, who campaigned many stock class racers in the 60s, blew everyone away by swapping a 428 Police Interceptor engine into a 68 Mustang. This caused Ford to offer the 428 as an option on 1969 Mustangs. In 1969 when Chrysler introduced the new 1970 E-bodied Challengers and Barracudas, which looked eerily like a Camaro,and were avalable with any engine up to and including the 440 Six-Pack, and 426 Hemi, GM decided to lift the ban and allow the largest engines to be put in the smaller cars. This is how the LS6 454 Chevelle, 455HO GTOs and Firbirds, and the 455 W30 442, and 455 Buick GS models came into being. If not for a few adventurous souls at the dealer level, some our most revered cars might never have been built. Mastermind