[Gary Merrick]

Hey John,

You would be correct, my Yenko did come from Marve Minneman Chevrolet in Austintown, Ohio. In fact a copy of the original window price label is currently on the parts manager's office wall, that is all I have left of that car along with some old pictures.

I had started working at General Motors in the fall of 1968, so I figured it was time to sell the 67 Mustang and go with a GM car. I actually wanted to buy a new 69 Corvette 427-435, but my Dad would not co-sign for the loan for a "PLASTIC" car as he put it. I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in basic training and we would usually talk on the weekends and Pops said he found me a Camaro and asked if I ever heard of a Yenko? Of course I had, in fact I even had looked at the one he was talking about before I left for basic. Since I knew, the Corvette deal was not going to happen, I told him go ahead and make the deal on the Yenko. He got the loan for me and bought it, I called him the next weekend, had him start it up in the garage and had my Mom drag the phone as far as the wire would let her so I could hear it run, of course he nailed the throttle a couple times and it was music to the ear. I was done with basic in a couple weeks and got to go home and drive my new car. There are a lot of stories that go with that car, more than I could write here, but probably the best one was in 1972, when it was only drag raced and ran low 11's, high 10's. I had just put a new race clutch in and my 53 year old Dad (who was a lot stronger than I was at 23) saw me struggling for an hour to get the Muncie back in asked if I wanted some help. The car was up on jack stands (that is a story in itself), he crawled under the car, picked the tranny up like it was a 5 pound stick and with one motion it was seated against the bell housing, crawled out and said there ya go, you can finish it. So I finished putting everything back together and asked him if he wanted to go for a short ride to test out the clutch, he said OK. We lived in a "VERY" residential neighborhood on a circle one way in, one way out and I told him I was just going to go around the circle. At that time, the car had slicks and open headers, no exhaust and was running it as a SS/D car. When I started driving, I turned to go out of the neighborhood instead of around the circle and he looked at me and yelled, "Where are you going?" I yelled back just up the street so I can make sure it goes in all four gears. I was use to the look he gave me, the one that said, you better not get a ticket. I went up to the next street which was a much better road (more traction), but I took it easy. We were probably a half mile from home and he yelled at me to turn it around and take it home. I pulled in a driveway, started backing out and he yelled, you better get going, cars are coming. That was all I needed to hear, stopped, reved it up to 6000, dropped the clutch and started pounding gears, got it in high gear, well over a 100 MPH, and started backing it down to make the turn to get back to our street, took it easy up the circle to our driveway, coasted in shut it off, looked over at him, he had this big "GRIN" on his face, his hands shaking and he could not talk much. I thanked him for helping me and said I think it works pretty good, what do you think? All he could say was "WOW", still shaking and I will never forget that big smile on his face. That was over 40 years ago, and he has been gone for almost 10 years, but it was times like that I will never forget. He was a hell of a guy, and more than once he would drag me and one of my cars home in the middle of the night and never complain. I was so Lucky to have a DAD like him. He took me to my first drag races in the late 1950's, and as they say the "Rest is History".....