The NordsKog Asteroid

A few years back, in the swirling chaos of the automotive journalism, a contemporary publication embarked on a quest for an unconventional clash. They sought a “traditional” hot rodder to dissect and dissect thoroughly the drivability of a new electric beast on wheels. Fate, it seemed, had its wicked sense of humor, and in that cosmic joke, they stumbled upon yours truly.

Then, a couple of weeks later I found myself at the Atlanta Airport waiting on an Uber ride to Porsche North America. The car they wanted me to review was the then new Porsche Taycan. Of course, that’s neither here nor there. No one here gives a shit about the Taycan. But, you know what might interest you? The color.

Porsche calls it “Frozen Berry Metallic.” I call it pink and the moment I saw it, I knew I had it seen before. For a good few months I racked my brain trying to figure out space and time. Eventually, I showed a picture to another buddy and he instantly had the same feeling. That night, Brett devoured every vintage book and magazine he had. The next morning, I woke up to a text:

”The Barris built ‘63.”

A quick google search and there it was – The Bob NordsKog ‘63 Corvette. I knew the car. The car itself is typical Barris – loud, obnoxious, and almost boring in its extravagance. But I loved every square inch of it… including, the color.

Bob apparently ordered the car from Chevrolet sans paint (you could do that?) and took it upon delivery to Barris for the work. Once done, it then went to C&T Automotive for a bore, stroke, and a nasty cam. And then finally, it went to Don Ferrara for a custom interior.

Afterwards, Bob spent a lot of time touring the car from show to show and drag strip to drag strip. For the shows, the Corvette wore Daytons and street tires. Five spoke Americans were tortured religiously on Sundays at the drag strip.

Rad, right?

But the joke doesn’t stop there. The pictures you see above? I got them off Kustomrama.com and they are the same photos I have in my own archive. Thing is, those photos were poorly color matched… either that or the issues of Popular Customs that both Kustomrama and I own have faded incredibly consistently with each other.

Regardless, the car is actually more of a copper metal flake and not the gorgeous shade of pink pearl that I had been day dreaming about. They could have just as easily called the “Asteroid,” the “Penny.”

It’s still dope. It’s still probably my favorite Barris built car of all time. But man, that pink…