Chevrolet Camaro 1968 RS\SS 427 Blown Small Block

A 1968 Camaro convertible pushing 800 horsepower shouldn’t exist — Chevrolet capped Camaro engines at 400 cubic inches that year, leaving big-inch dreams to a few renegade dealers willing to break the rules. Here’s how cars like this one got their extra muscle, and why the loophole still fascinates collectors today.

Absolutely gorgeous convertible with a lot of power – 800HP!!!

An 800-horsepower badge under the hood of a 1968 Camaro convertible should stop any serious muscle car fan in their tracks — because Chevrolet never built one like it. General Motors’ own corporate edict that year forbade any engine larger than 400 cubic inches from reaching a Camaro’s engine bay, which means the big-inch dreams belonged to a handful of renegade dealers rather than the factory floor. Somewhere between that rule and this convertible’s blown small-block sits a story of back-room deals, quiet paperwork, and a loophole clever enough to put real muscle into showroom cars nobody at GM headquarters signed off on. So how did cars like this one end up wearing numbers Chevrolet officially said were impossible?

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The Rule Chevrolet Wouldn’t Bend

For 1968, GM enforced a corporate policy capping engines in Camaros and other mid-size or smaller models at 400 cubic inches — meaning there was no official Regular Production Option for a 427 in an RS/SS that year. Buyers who wanted the biggest of Chevrolet’s big blocks in a Camaro were officially out of luck no matter how much money they were willing to spend at the dealership.

The Dealers Who Found the Loophole Anyway

A handful of high-performance dealers, including Don Yenko, Baldwin-Motion, and Dana Chevrolet, worked around GM’s edict by swapping in 427 shortblocks themselves. Yenko’s COPO 9737 package officially ordered a 396, which Yenko then converted to 427 spec and sold as the “Yenko 427” — a true factory-built 427 Camaro, the COPO 9561 with the 425-horsepower L72, didn’t arrive until 1969.

Why the Numbers Still Matter to Collectors

Whether a car like this represents an original dealer conversion or a later resto-mod built around a modern supercharged small-block, documentation is everything. Serious buyers look for cowl tags, invoices, and casting numbers to separate a genuine period conversion from a tribute build, since the rarity and history behind a real dealer-built 1968 427 Camaro is worth far more than raw horsepower alone.

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