Id rock it. It needs to be in its natural habitat, on the strip. The bade appears to be a 1963 Fuel-Injection fender badge...
You would have to take it to the NCRS meet, and tell them it was a low mileage original that you cut up and threw away the left over parts!
That car ran at Dover drag strip in the 60's and the VW behind it with the "pie crusts" had a injected nail head in it. That picture is around 63/64 at Dover I have some pictures of the VW. I always liked the "Willys like" back window in that car. It looked a lot better than it ran. Pat
I’d definitely take it to all the Corvette shows and freak them out! Tell them it was a rare factory race car.
Corvettes were made to be modified... it’s too bad so many people are afraid of it these days... I did mine up as a mild custom, kinda like someone might have done back when it was almost new, long before the “numbers matching “ nonsense started.... Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
It would be awesome to see if that car still exists today. And I agree, NCRS meets and run it down the strip!
I'd rock that. It's crazy enough to be really cool while at the same time still being a Corvette...that (IMO) doesn't happen too often.
That ‘split window’ Bug is a ‘53 or earlier.....quite rare in the US even in the ‘60s..... As for the Vette......surprising to me that it would be ‘hacked’ so extensively for a car as near new as it was at the time....unless it was salvaged from a wreck or a stripped theft car. In any case, an interesting period piece. Ray
Do you think that it was ever a real factory Corvette. I am thinking these guys just obtain enough replacement panels from a Chevy dealership to put this thing together. I remember a guy buying just a Vega body (when Vega's first came out) without the front end. Just the body, cowl, roof, quarters, floor pans and rear hatch, all put together. He obtain the part number for just that assembly and bought it. It just had primer on it. It look like it came right off of the assembly line. Another point to consider, he was a mechanic at the Chevy dealership, in York, Maine, so he had the inside track..
Personally, I’d paint it competition orange ; and run it hard! One wild ass lookn' machine in my book.
Maybe the car had front-end damage....the owner picking it up for cheap and cutting off the damaged part. Whatever the case may be, it looks like those fender wells would be catching a lot of air and creating lift...enough to make the car unstable or at least slow it down. OK, what would I do with it? If there was a drag strip around here and the car was legal (which it probably wouldn't be) I'd get a new front end and go racing. Given there's no drag strip here, I'd put it up for sale with the hope that there is someone out there whose emotions and common sense would betray him. If the front end parts could be had for the right price, it might pay to install those before selling it. In any case, if I saw this car at a nostalgia race I'd be all over it. It is the ultimate drag racing curio.
In looking at it again, I will change my guess to: The guy had a chassis and needed a body. He got a deal on this body and thought it would be super cool to run a Corvette body...but he'd have to cut the front-end off in order for it to fit over the front tires.
I bought and sold a few raggedy 59/60 Vettes for parts in the early 70's. They were $100 to $200 cars in those days. So building from a real Vette isn't hard to imagine.
That car probably started life as a rare 1958 fuel injected 3 speed car with power windows! Those are fuelly emblems on the fenders
Recovering NCRS member here. When the mid year corvettes came out the early ones became unappreciated. Who knows what happened to this one, could have been wrecked and dragged out of a junk yard. It happens.
Somewhere in this ugly-underside of hot rodding's past there's a good "we've descended from apes; thank goodness we left the trees!" joke lurking. This make me want to jump in a time machine and watch this thing run, and probably beat the pants off a few good looking cars-- maybe while being heckled. In the eighties I saw a local circle track racer with a butt-ugly car get run off the track, then heckled, then cheered when he recovered and held his own for the rest of the race. Fun stuff.
As much as I like early Vettes this is one that may be a bit over the top IMO. That being said I remember repairing the bodywork on a friends early drag car (57 Vette) in the 60s and the body was so incredibly porous and cracked and beat up not many people would tackle it-pure junk by today's standards and I have repaired and am repairing a few. This may have been one of those derelicts and the guys just had a few beers and a few laughs and took a saw and thought it would run some numbers. I would most likely enjoy watching it run and would probably have a smile at the end of the run.
I could have sworn the 'Vette pic in question came from Dover, and @1934coupe confirmed it—thanks! And so, since that's the case...maybe these guys retired their, uhm, T and were back with vengeance?
Drag Car Road Racer Custom Corvette’s are great at all three Just never leave one stock They have a higher calling Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Bah! The adulation that stuff like this gets, on the HAMB, so clearly illustrates the difference between what is considered cool today and what was cool back then. I hate to see you selling this as the Hot Rod Gospel. Maybe it's my West Coast bias, but I never saw stuff like that at the races. With historic cars like KS Pittman, Mazmanian, Tony Nancy, Julius Hughes and racers like that, what's the point of featuring uncompetitive, but weird, stuff like this? Seems kind of rat roddish ...
I bought the front wheels from that car, for a hundred bucks I think, out of a garage in NewRochelle, if I remember correctly. The fellow who built and ran that car was pretty knowledgable, had a bunch of neat stuff he was working on, and was a real nice guy as well
I can't say this is the case with the Corvettes but most of the factories offered what was called a "body in white" to the racers, just the basic body shell in primer. Not sure when this originated but this was how a lot of the Pro/Stock cars of the 70's were built.
By the way, not everyone had access to the "California" pros to build their cars. and not every car was professional quality even on the west coast, no matter what you might like to "remember". The guys who built this car had a 2 car garage, and lots of ingenuity, and probably had more fun than most. Betcha they are all in their early seventies now, and are glad they did it.
Damn, that split window Bug is worth nearly as much as a Corvette nowadays to the right people! As to the Vette in question, I agree it was probably a total, may have even been a couple of totals. Probably bought from an insurance company for the engine, since we know all small block Chevy engines are Vette engines!
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