Much like a human, the story of where a car has been can seriously effect the car’s soul. Cars have souls? Yeap, they sure do, but it isn’t James Brown kind of soul though. It’s much different than that. When you know where a car has been and all of the amazing tales that go with it, it can instantly change a cars value, the way that you drive it, and its appeal to others. As a car enthusiast, I love hearing these automotive saga’s, because it can turn a very ordinary car into something special. Whether embellished or not, this is one of those tales.
When I was quite a bit younger, my dad and I went to car shows and often met up with a friend of his named Mike that had a 63 split window Corvette with a Mako Shark nose and a built 427 big block. The story with his car was an interesting one that landed it near the top of my automotive “Do Want!” list.
The story goes……..that the car was sitting behind a local dealer in the 1970’s after a bad accident. The nose was completely destroyed, it was missing tons of parts, and the engine had vanished. For months it sat in the snow and rain, looking more and more sad each day. Driving by it frequently, Mike made it well known to his wife that he really wanted that car VERY badly. Sure enough, his apparently awesome wife inquired about the car, bought it, and gave the sad looking pile of Corvette parts to him as a birthday present (Best b-day present ever? Probably.) He was thrilled, as any guy should be that just received a split window vette. The only downfall was that now he had to reassemble the puzzle pieces back together again. He started with a Mako Shark nose, and began flaring the fenders and straightening out the body, eventually painting it a lighter shade of blue. He then had my dad build a 427 engine for it. The problem was that they were afraid the engine was going to get stolen before they got a chance to install it in the car. So what did they do? Well, they chained it to the house for a while. Time passes and the high compression engine was built with the meanest parts available at the time. Before tossing it into the car, they decided to fire it up on the engine stand. Being car guys, they wanted to hear it with the garage door closed for a few second so that they can really “feel” the power. As they expected, the engine fired up. Unfortunately for them, it immediately blew all the windows out of the garage door. Oops. Lesson learned.
My dad still claims that it is one of the most scary fast cars that he has ever been in. He said that when you bury your foot into the floor it felt like it was going to pull the front wheels off the ground. The picture above was probably taken around 1994, which was the last time I saw this car. If you know of it’s whereabouts, I would absolutely LOVE to see it again and / or more pictures of it. The soul of that car runs deep, and that is what makes it extra awesome in my mind.
Got automotive stories of your own? Share em with us!
