Sigh…

I know better than to go by car shows…

Especially Corvette shows…

‘Fake’ 57, with an LT-1 motor in it… Sigh…

Real 57 Fuelie… With an automatic! The only thing that ‘spoiled’ this one was the hood scoop. But everything else was correct!!!

Pristine 62 Vette, all correct except the paint, lots of chrome, but a multiple show winner! And all the chrome was NOS (New Old Stock), I hate to think what that cost them!!!

Real 67, 427/435 all original except new paint! Beautiful!

The real deal!!!

‘Fake’ 67, with a 67 body dropped over a late model chassis and with an LS-7 powerplant.

Labor of love, this is the 67 GS replica that was destroyed a couple of years ago at an auction, where high winds blew the show tent down, destroying the body on this one. It was a 13 month evolution to restore it!

Even a correct GS frame under it!

And it is drivable and runs like a scalded dog!!! 😀

There were a lot of ‘new’ Corvettes there, but I didn’t waste any pictures on them. It was a really nice show, put on by Lone Star Corvettes, kudos to them, and all those who came out and brought their cars!

While I miss the camaraderie, I don’t miss the efforts to clean the car up after driving in, and I sure as hell don’t miss judging… There was always going to be at least one pissed off person, regardless of the event, the judges, or ‘some’ thing that sets them off!

Comments

Sigh… — 19 Comments

  1. Good post.

    A high school friend’s older brother had a mid sixties Corvette that he bought new and it included the winter hard top. I wonder what became of that car? And if I remember right it wouldn’t be original now because I recall a change from the three carb setup (six pack?) to a really big single carb setup.

    My only convertible car was a Fiat 850 Spyder (rear engine and think more of a motorized roller skate) and I am positive that if an area had had drought conditions for years we could have caused a monsoon by driving the car to that location and putting down the top. Not a reliable family car at all, but it was fun to drive.

  2. Corvettes (even the new ones) reflect a style and tradition that has elegance and love of driving at its core.

  3. While never a fan, I enjoyed the profits we made selling them. I do think it is, year in and year out, GMs best offering. The styling of some years I find pleasing to the eye, especially the interiors.

  4. I never had much problems with the judges at shows. The spectators however were something else. Spilled drinks on the care, dirty paw prints, stupid questions, leaning on, sitting on, sitting in (!!)the car.

  5. Nice cars!

    I’ll work the Corvette car show at the GM plant here in Bowling Green on 9/30. I’m always amazed on how much people work people put in to cleaning their cars.

    Corvettes in this town are like F150s in Texas.

  6. A Vette for me is like the homes I view from the lake.
    I appreciate someone else providing the view of something I’ll never have. 🙂

  7. Had a ’62 in ’66. Both tops. Got married, she got with child,couldn’t fit behind the wheel, I traded it for a station wagon…sigh.

  8. “…traded it for a station wagon…”

    Skip, That’s the story of our lives.

  9. John- LOL, yeah those DID seem to be favorites of Sailors… 🙂 There were three or four around most bases I was on.

    LL- That it does, at least the American version, e.g. horsepower and handling vs. elegance, handling, underpowered, but look good in the parking lot 😀

    WSF- LOL, I’m not surprised!

    Roger- There is that… sigh

    Gerry- True! 😀 And you get a lot of old survivor vettes too! One of the keys to an old car having original paint is to look at the splash panels under the doors, if they barely have any paint on them, it’s original. The reason being the painters at BG were ‘big’ enough they didn’t like bending over to get the bottoms of those panels.

    Ed- That’s actually not a bad way to look at it, and a heck of a lot cheaper! 😀

    Skip/Roy- Yep and yep… sigh Except I traded for a Volvo on the overseas buyer program.

  10. Like being at a fly-in and getting yelled at for asking someone not to poke the cloth wings. “If you don’t want us to touch it, then put cones and ropes around it!” Poke, poke, poke. 99.0% of people are wonderful and read signs and don’t touch without asking. Then there’s that one percent…

    Lovely cars!

  11. Hey Old NFO;

    Yeah Corvettes are cool cars, and I do have a corvette story for you…back in 1987/1988 time-frame, I was running my Mustang GT doing about 110 on the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden and as I recall it was a 17 KM straightaway. I was in the middle lane and when you drive in Germany, you always keep one eyeball on the rear view mirror. Well anyway I saw 2 sets of headlights far off in the distance and I figured I had plenty of time so I reached over to flip the cassette that was in my radio and *BOOM* on both sides of me went a Porsche 962 and a corvette “King of the Hill”, I knew because of the distinctive(at the time) taillights and I was a huge fan of car and driver magazine and C&D did several write-ups on the car. Well anyway, they left me like I was standing still, and keep in mind I was running about 100 to 110 MPH on the autobahn. All I can say was *Dammmm*

  12. TXRed- Yep, there is ALWAYS that 1 damn %… sigh

    Bob- LOL, I’m not surprised! The Autobahn is an ‘interesting’ highway to drive on! 😀

  13. True story. Friend of mine died. He had a bunch of old cars in his shop that he had been working on for years including an odd fiber-glass bodied unknown. Short version it turned out to be the one of the first three factory special-built ‘vettes for their first try at Le Mans. Eventually after all the ownership claims and counter claims were settled it restored at a cost of ~$500,000 and valued at ~$2-3 mil. And decades before this I had tried to research the history of the car but failed.

  14. I had a ’67 coupe with a 327/350 and a 4-speed. Got stolen right out of my driveway one night, and disappeared off the face of the Earth. Even with my connections to LEO and the automotive underground (think of Uncle Vito’s “Body Shop”), nobody could find a trace of it.

    Replaced it with a ’69 T-Top that had a 427/390 (basically an “Impala Motor”) and a 4-speed.

    The “real” fuelie with an automatic? Nope, the fuel injection motor could only be had with a manual transmission.

  15. emdfl- Wow!!!

    McT- Dang, you’re right! Thanks for the correction!

    drjim- I know they ‘supposedly’ didn’t build one, but this one was a real Rochester fuel 283, with a two speed ‘Glide behind it… And the data plate agreed!

  16. > cleaning

    You need to go to one of the Auburn-Cord-Dusenberg events.

    I’m not sure how they do scoring, but they don’t pamper trailer queens, and some of those cars drive many hundreds of miles to South Bend or other meets. Bugs, road grime, and a few oil leaks either don’t count, or don’t count enough to worry about.

    Those guys don’t baby the cars on the road, either. I’ve been passed by them while I was rolling at scofflaw speed myself…

  17. One that got away:

    About ’72, I ran across a guy that had a split-window, small-block 4spd Vette that would not run. By his description, I knew what the problem was, and it was an easy fix. I figured I’d have it running in a half hour. We agreed to an even swap for my v8, 4spd, ’65 Mustang 2+2.
    At the appointed time, I showed up with title in hand to discover that someone had informed him of the cause of his problem, and he backed out of the deal. Bummed.
    ——-
    About ’69, a HS buddy informs me that his brother had just got a new Honda 450. Gave the dealer his ’58 Vette plus cash in trade. Car had a brand new custom interior, and a 327. I think it was $800 added to the car, but I’m not sure now. I wonder if he ever regretted that deal?