Hey I was wondering about the 1967-8 "nickey" emblem. I know this is a 2nd Gen site but theres people on here that know alot more than just 2nd Gens. I was flicking through a friends D&R Classic Automotive catalog and on pg130 they sell this "nicky" emblem. Its more than double the price of other emblems. Whats the story with them???

I believe that Nickey did much the same things as Yenko, Dana, Berger, and all the other big dealers of that era. They usually started with the big block COPO cars and dressed them up with their paint and trim.

I don't know if they added any performance enhancements like Baldwin Motion did.

If Chevy made the parts, there was a way to get them into your new car if you had enough money.

The Nickey 427 Camaro was one of the earlier conversions. It was a Chicago area dealer.
Here on the west coast the sales and conversions were handled by Bill Thomas Race Cars, 510 E. Julianna, Anaheim. Don't bother driving by these days. This of course is the same Bill Thomas of Cheetah fame.
His shop did the conversions for Nickey cars sold out here, and it was his headers that went onto the cars.
Car & Driver magazine did a road test of the 427, which made the 427 Camaro famous among sports car people and readers around the world.

I was fortunate enough to be able to hang out at Bill Thomas' shop many times, and saw the famous red Car & Driver test car, and saw the twin black stripes leading out the door mentioned in the original article. You guys who collect mags may have come across this road test.

I remember seeing a row of palleted 427s waiting for transplants, and a row of 396 take-outs waiting to be sold as bargain basement rat motors to local racers and hot rodders.

There were certainly other tuners, even Dana who ran the first local Z/28 out at Riverside in '67, but Bill Thomas had an international reputation in big-league road racing and drag racing as a tuner and engine builder, to say nothing of the Cheetah, so Nickey Camaros gained from the relationship.

BTW, I rode in that original red with white bumblebee stripe car that C&D tested. It was an amazing car, and of course everywhere we went people stared and pointed. After all, the Camaro was a car that many still had never seen before. It was stunningly beautiful when parked next to an overstyled and feminine Mustang.

Check out discussion board www.yenko.net. (http://www.yenko.net.) There is a section for Nickey-built cars.
Just a note, Nickey did do some 427/454 conversions on second-gen Camaros in the early 70's and today are extremely rare. In at least two cases that I know of Nickey used base model (not an SS OR Z-28) Camaros, one for a LS-6 and one for a L-88 conversion. They also performed a number of LT-1 conversions on 1973 and 1974 Camaros. Documentation on these cars is very important.

[This message has been edited by ChrisS (edited September 28, 2003).]

thanks guys, that yenko site has lots of info.