Pure COPO porno, that’s what this is. A gritty, short, no nonsense video shows Dave Connolly, the multi-time NHRA national event Pro Stock winner at the wheel of Victor Cagnazzi’s new COPO Camaro at a test session on the strip at Rockingham Dragway. The car is dressed up as a tribute to Grumpy Jenkins and it looks fantastic, working headlights and all. While we cannot see the scoreboard at the end of the run, multiple sources are reporting that this car ran between 9.38 and 9.45 in testing. This is with (we assume) the 427ci naturally aspirated LS combo offered with the car. If you listen closely, you’ll hear the car shift twice so we know that it has a three speed automatic in it. That is notable because we’re thinking the majority of these cars will have a ‘Glide in them.
Why is a high 9.30/low 9.40 impressive when Cobra Jets are going into the 7s? Easy, those CJs are highly worked up Super Stock cars, not stock eliminator machines. The numbers (if they are true) from this COPO are impressive because the existing A/stock automatic record is 9.89 as set by Adam Keir in April of this year. That means the COPO (if it is in legal race trim, and with the US Nats coming in days, we’re thinking that it is) will annihilate that number by a margin larger than a half a second. That’s pretty much unheard of in the world of stock, where incremental improvements are the order of the day.
The car leaves like a dream, pulling a perfect wheelstand and it sounds meaner than hell at idle before Connolly drops the hammer.
Press play below to watch an awesome COPO rip of a potentially record shattering run. The US Nats are going to be fun!
