History Saving Dominique - Now with (slow) build thread!

I first saw her in a few grainy pictures of an upcoming estate auction. An old customized 50's Corvette supposedly with a Tom Culbertson front end kit and a Barris rear kit (according to the auctioneer). She looked rough but I was intrigued. Someone had put a lot of work into this car...canted quad headlights, '59 Caddy tail lights. I must admit the blower got my attention even though it and the oversized rear tires looked out of place. I called the auctioneer and got very little information but told him I was very interested in the car. I asked for a few more pics and found it was a small block. I called every day for the next 3 days, asking little detail questions. "Were both headlight bezels there? How about the tail light parts? Any interior still there?".
The auction was 5 days away. Then I got a message. Bad news was the auction was cancelled. Good news, the car was not part of the estate and could be sold outright. Seems like 3 guys had an eye on it and were interested. I was in the running. I spoke with the auctioneer (now my go-between) daily, and made an offer. One of the other guys went to see the car, low balled and got sent home. Now it was down to two.
On Saturday I was told that the other guy was going to see the car in person on the following Monday. That was a looong weekend. I was 2 states away so it wasn't a quick trip for me to go for a look...so I waited. On Monday morning I called my go-between, the other guy was on the way but running late. I called again a few hours later and was told the guy was going to lunch with the owner to talk about the car. BAD feeling in my gut....was he going to pull the I'm here with money and a trailer deal? Minutes felt like hours, hours like.....you know.
Finally I got a call. The other guy kept trying to talk the price down because he had to get a new front clip, replace the doors, replace the rear body panels....WAIT, NO....I want it just as it is, my offer stands with no strings. I told him I can have the money wired to him before noon the next day. I was told that even though the other guy would match my offer, he had worn out his welcome and if I wanted it, it was mine. More to come....

 

Nice!


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Congrats @Barn Hunter that's a great end to a hope and well played hand of cards...looking forward to your journey with it and hopefully some history surfaces to jazz it all up even more...

 

There's a lot more to this story....I just didn't want to write too much at once....keep checking back.

 

I'm thinking I have what's left of a magazine with that car or it's twin in it but the magazine is probably too far gone to be of any good as most of them got water damaged. It didn't have a blower or big tires on it though. I'm thinking it is/was one of those trend books that sold for .75 in the early 60's.

 

Oh Yeah, now that you teased us we're sitting on pins and needles waiting for the next chapter in this fascinating story...Don.

 

You've sure peaked my interest..we're ready for the "now here's the rest of the story".

 

Congratulations.

 

Corvettes are not on my radar , but , ....Even the most hardened Corvette restorer would have to be a moronic idiot to ruin this historic car with a "factory original " restoration!!!

 

.....They are out there and most wouldn't even get it.

 

Not my thing but I agree, restore it as is. To note........I've seen people use the excuses noted here to try and drive down the price even though they have no intentions of doing any of it.

 

Well....Here is one of the "cards" I had to play. Near the middle of that Monday, while the other guy was there, I asked the auctioneer (now my go between) how he was going to get paid...by the seller or the buyer? He told me he'd probably get something from the seller. So I told him that if I got the car, I would wire an extra $500 for him for helping me. I do believe that made the difference....

 

Money DOES talk. Congratulations.

 

KILLER !!!!

Nice touch with that extra bit of grease

 

Great find.
Cant wait to see some original pics of the car.

 

Sweet...please keep us updated on your progress...

 

So now I had bought a car I knew nothing about, sight unseen, 2 states away. I called Rick (Racinman here on the HAMB) for help in getting the car home. He said he could do it but he was booked until the end of the month (that was about 3 weeks away). I was going back and forth thinking I didn't want to wait that long, but my truck doesn't have a hitch and it does have a driveshaft vibration, so I told Rick to put me on his list.
In the meantime, I called the auctioneer and asked him if it was OK to store the car in his warehouse. We had become distant friends by now and he had told me he had a half empty warehouse and it was no trouble bringing the car there if I wanted to. Well, yes, I did want to. He arranged for towing and called me to say it was now safe in his hands. I felt secure now that the car was in storage, so now I just had to wait.
The story I got was this car had been converted to a drag car in the middle to late 70's and had been raced around North and South Carolinas. It was with that family until 2 years ago, when it was sold to a guy who wanted it for a father/son project. I guess it was too much for them to handle, so it became available.
EVERY night I was on the computer, looking for Carolina dragways, Corvette drag cars from 1975, 6, 7....just anything that would give me a clue to it's history. For 6 consecutive days I came up blank. My wife thought I was crazy staying up until 1 and 2 in the morning going through pages and pages of Google. On the next night I was searching custom Corvettes. On the fourth page a small image caught my eye.....here it is blown up.

 

Shit yea! i fall into the camp of not usually paying much attention to corvettes, but damnit this thing is cool! Looking forward to hearing the history on it!

 

So you know within minutes I was on Ebay buying 3 copies of this magazine.

 

Good deal, can't wait to see what you do with it.

 

Oooo! I like it.

 

What a great find...glad you got it and intend to restore it to its custom glory. I was 10 when the Corvette was released and I fell in love immediately. I grew to love the performance in particular but it didn't matter what anyone did to one (well, within some reasoning I guess). I haven't had a Vette for 40 years now but I still have the '40 Chevy convertI traded my '62 Vette for in 1979.

That's a classy looking car...give it lotsa tender loving care.

 

Congratulations, dogged determination is the reason the right guy ended up with this piece of history, looking forward to seeing the car brought back to life. HRP

 

Remember when the purists were down on us "butchers" for what we did with our cars? Now we the "butchers" are trying to save our cars from the purists.

 

So we never stop researching...do we? I know I don't. 2 days after ordering the Rodding and Restyling mags, I was on a Corvette forum , just browsing when I saw a topic "What ever happened to this car?". I checked it out and it was about Dominique! There were several positive comments and one that said that they hoped it had slithered off into oblivion. I wasn't totally surprised....and it didn't bother me a bit. But as I scrolled down, I saw this

 

Well, off to Ebay again to buy 3 copies of this one. Don't know why 3 is my magic number....

 

Awesome score! I agree redo it as is!