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Jenks

By Ryan Weaver

Jenks is lost and I want to find her. She is a 1969 Chevelle SS 396. I refer to the car as female for two reasons: I have always referred to any coveted mechanical device of great power and grace in the feminine gender. I can reminisce about my parents taking my brother and me to buy our first new bicycles and remember everyone commenting after one of us said “she” is a beauty. The second reason is that Jenks was sponsored by Jenkins Beauty Shop, owned and operated by B. Carol Jenkins.

I want to find this particular Chevelle because out of the 86,307 SS 396 cars produced by Chevrolet, this car is one of 8,486 (or 9,486, depending on the source) with the 375-hp 396-ci V-8, often referred to as the L78. Adding further to her rarity, and really the main reason I am looking for Jenks, is that she came with the rare RPO L89 aluminum cylinder heads.

Only 400 cars and trucks (El Caminos) were built with this option, making this rare Chevelle worth quite a bit more than a standard L78 car. Unless you used the now well-known Central Office Production Order (COPO) system to get an RPO L72 (425-hp 427), the L89 was the top engine choice from the order sheet at the dealer for your new Chevelle in 1969.

This rare and desirable Chevelle is one of only 400 copies built by Chevrolet featuring aluminum heads. It’s adorned in code 76-76 Daytona Yellow. (Photo Courtesy Jerry Hinton)

The 400 L89 engines were split among five Chevelle body styles: Malibu (hardtop), Malibu (convertible), two-door sedan pickup (El Camino), 300 Deluxe Sport Coupe (hardtop), and 300 Deluxe Coupe (post sedan). The bulk of the 400 L89s are the Malibu hardtop body style like Jenks.

At the Dealer

In the spring of 1970, James (Jim) Jenkins and his stepson, Joe Hinton, went to DeNooyer Chevrolet in Battle Creek, Michigan, to purchase a car expressly for drag racing. A yellow Chevelle sat on the showroom floor with only about 6,000 original miles on the odometer. The original owner had the car for about a year and then traded it in at DeNooyer. Its color was the SS-only Code 76-76 Daytona Yellow, which was an extra cost.

The car featured a black D96 side stripe and black bench-seat interior but was ordered without a vinyl roof. The manual transmission was a closed-ratio M21 4-speed that was a perfect fit for drag racing. The rear-end gear was more of a road gear setup, likely 3.55s. However, because the car was trailered to and from the track for drag racing, the gears were quickly swapped to 4.88s and then 5.13s.