Tim Allen is well known for his roles in family-friendly programming. He has played characters such as Santa Claus and Buzz Lightyear, but it all started with his family sitcom Home Improvement, which was based on Allen’s stand-up comedy. In the show Allen is constantly working on building a hot rod in his garage. In fact he now owns the 1933 Ford Roadster that they built on the set. Hollywood is full of celebrities with fancy cars and nice collections, but the percentage of those celebrities that can honestly call themselves “car people” is very low. Tim Allen however is one of those people.
Allen has been into cars his whole life and grew up racing cars in Detroit. He is incredibly knowledgeable about cars, so he knew just what he wanted from his ’68 Camaro COPO Muscle Car and with the help of Bodie Stroud, Detroit Speed and Engineering, and Classic Industries, he got just what he was looking for. Let’s check out how this vehicle came to be…
What’s A COPO?
The acronym COPO stands for Central Office Production Order and is the process used back in the ‘60s when people wanted to get around the manufacturer's performance limits set by Chevrolet, in order to put a larger displacement engine into a special order Camaro. These cars were incredibly popular and still carry a whole lot of appeal today. The COPO Camaro got started after Don Yenko’s performance shop was having trouble keeping up with all of the special requests for Camaro upgrades and Yenko used the COPO process in order to get Camaros to come off the line with the L-72 427 motor already installed.
Obviously, in the case of Allen’s vehicle, it is not a true COPO, since the vehicle was assembled long after the COPO run and no paperwork was filed with the Central Office, but Allen had the COPO nameplates put on due to the cars that inspired his vehicle and the fact that his Camaro was built in the spirit of these great automobiles.
More Power
Tim Allen’s catchphrase from Home Improvement was “More Power”. His character seemed to view the solution to any problem as being adding more power. This often led to disastrous consequences on the show, but in real life, with his 1968 Chevy Camaro COPO Muscle Car it led to great results. Probably because the higher power aspect wasn’t the only detail he concerned himself with but instead made sure that every detail of the car was perfect. Another strong guess as to why it worked out with his COPO Camaro is that he wasn’t putting this car together all on his own.
In order to get the power that he was looking for Allen and his team selected a 505-horsepower 427 LS7 engine for this first generation F-body Camaro. This modern engine packs a punch and the power can be felt from the get-go when starting up this 5-speed manual transmission. Allen worked with the legendary Bodie Stroud of Bodie Stroud Industries to customize his Camaro into a thing of beauty. The chassis and suspension were taken care of by Detroit Speed and Engineering, while most of the other parts of the vehicle were provided by Classic Industries.
This 1968 Chevy Camaro COPO took seven months to build and you can see the time that went into it in all of the little details. Tim wanted a car that was a combination of a 1968 Camaro that a friend of his had in his youth, Smokey Yunick’s Trans-Am racer, and the 1969 427 COPO Camaros. At the same time Allen wanted the car to feel like a new car you could buy off the lot today.
A Diamond Among Gems
Tim's Camaro celebrates simplicity while maybe not being quite so simplistic. The car has clean lines. The modern engine has all of the modern technology of sensors and wire harnesses and the like, tucked away so that everything looks simple and clean under the hood. The vehicle has great handling and braking rather than just being the complete speed machine that you might expect from Allen’s Home Improvement character. The dash is neatly designed with digital displays that perfectly replicate the original gauges.
Tim Allen has one of the best car collections in Hollywood. From a 1996 Chevy Impala with the modification of an LT5 motor to his 1986 Ford RS200, which isn’t street legal in the US, to a 1965 Shelby Cobra S/C, to the 1933 Ford Roadster from his show all of his vehicles are pretty incredible and have something unique about them, but the 1968 Chevy Camaro COPO still manages to stand out among this group of outstanding automobiles. The customization of this beautiful car is so spot on that it is really pretty impossible to find a single thing that you would want to change on this vehicle. It is the perfect combination of old school American muscle with modern precision technology. Allen’s COPO is powerful, comfortable, and handles like a dream. What more could you ask for?