Chevrolet Corvette Coupe

...two names but had three, Chevrolet Corvette Sting-Ray, all screamed its origins as being not of the world as I knew it.

Around about the same time I saw my first full-sized Corvette, on Pilgrim Street, in Newcastle, of all places. It announced its presence by the V8 Growl from its chromed side pipes. You could almost feel the ground shake as it rumbled past. A black 1964 soft-top, it had originally belonged to Eric Burden of the pop ...
...that Tom Faulkner, well known Corvette enthusiast and author, owned it. What a motor! I made my mind up there and then. Some day, one day, I was going to own one of these fire-breathing monsters. For me, you can keep your Ferraris and Lamborghini's with their schizophrenic natures and highly stressed engines that sometimes run but more often don't. Give me a big-block Vette and watch me smoke the bastards!

I didn't see another Corvette ... more

Some names have a cache about them that speaks volumes. You have only to utter one of them and everyone instinctively knows exactly what you are talking about. With fashion it's names like Dior, Laurent and Chanel, with muscle cars it's Cobra and Corvette.

When I was a kid, my mum had an American pen pal who would send me small presents at Christmas time. One year, when I was about nine or ten, I got a model kit of a 1963 Split-Window Corvette. I'd never seen anything like it. The flip-up headlights and gorgeous shape just blew me away. This was in the days of Ford Anglias, Morris Minors and Minis. Here was something so far removed from British post war austerity as to be almost unrecognisable. Even the fact that the damned thing wasn't satisfied with two names but had three, Chevrolet Corvette Sting-Ray, all screamed its origins as being not of the world as I knew it.

Around about the same time I saw my first full-sized Corvette, on Pilgrim Street, in Newcastle, of all places. It announced its presence by the V8 Growl from its chromed side pipes. You could almost feel the ground shake as it rumbled past. A black 1964 soft-top, it had originally belonged to Eric Burden of the pop group The Animals, but when I saw it I believe that Tom Faulkner, well known Corvette enthusiast and author, owned it. What a motor! I made my mind up there and then. Some day, one day, I was going to own one of these fire-breathing monsters. For me, you can keep your Ferraris and Lamborghini's with their schizophrenic natures and highly stressed engines that sometimes run but more often don't. Give me a big-block Vette and watch me smoke the bastards!

I didn't see another Corvette in the flesh until I was seventeen. At the time, my long-suffering old man was teaching me to drive in a battered old Mini. One day, when out for a lesson we stopped for petrol at a small roadside garage in Prudoe, not far from Hexham in Northumberland. Up on the car-lift in the small workshop was a pristine silver 1970 big-block coupe. It transpired that it was the property of the Garage owner's son. The owner himself (to whom we chatted) decried the car as a "piece of Yank shit" but I thought that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. What got my attention more than anything as I gazed up in wonder at this St Louis masterpiece was its sheer presence. Everything about it was massive by European standards. The huge chassis that looked as though it had been made from the same girders as the Forth Bridge. The twin three-inch exhaust pipes snaking back along the underside of the car, terminating in a pair of huge rectangular bell mouths each about six inches across, looking more like tank exhausts than anything that would ever be fitted to a car. I must have stood there gazing at it for about fifteen minutes before my Dad finally shooed me back into my little Mini. I drove home amid increasingly absurd fantasies about me arriving at various fashionable places in "my" Corvette. Always, of course, accompanied by some indescribably beautiful young lady. Yes, I'm afraid that I was the complete nerd in those days (still am, truth to tell). For some reason, the registration number stuck in my memory, even years afterwards, probably because it was so unusual, XHH 58H. My dream car.

Tempus fugit and all that rot. I kept expecting to grow up, but it never happened. Over the years I owned all manner of performance cars and bikes but never a Corvette. In 1996 I had a bad fall on an NC30 (fantastic bike, wrote it off, sob!) and Janet, my long-suffering soul mate, decided that enough was enough. I was informed in no uncertain terms that "fat old has-beens" and motorcycles did not mix and if I ever bought another I would be hearing in due course from her solicitors. Was I cowed by this ultimatum? You bet, but I had a cunning plan. In desperation I had a new double garage built on the side of the house and began to search in earnest for what I described to Jan as, "A little old sports car to do up darling". Of course I was doing nothing of the sort. I was looking for a Corvette!

Two years later, I must have viewed about fifty cars. They were all either shit or silly money. I was beginning to despair of ever finding one. Then, one day, I called a guy in Nottingham who had advertised a 1976 coupe in Autotrader but unfortunately it was already sold it by the time I phoned. Curses! However, he was a pleasant enough guy and we got to chatting, as you do. I found myself telling him about my fruitless search for a car and he said, "Oh, you need to speak to so and so." (I can?t remember the chap's name). It turned out that he knew this guy who made a living by, among other things, finding Corvettes for people. Anyway, to cut a long story short he gave me the guy's number and I promptly rang him. The guy asked what kind of car I wanted and assured me that he would call me if and when he found something that fitted the bill.

Weeks passed and no word. In fact I forgot about the guy until, a few months later, he called me. "I've found you a car."
"Fantastic!" I said.
"There's a problem though."
"Oh, what's that?" I asked.
"The guy who owns it doesn't have it"
"Wha?" Bemused.
"The car’s up for sale in a dealer, the owner lives in Cumberland.
"Well, can't I just buy it from the dealer?" I demanded.
"No you fucking can't." was his terse reply.
"Why not?"
"Because one, its up for silly money and two, I think I can get it a lot cheaper because I know the owner quite well."
"Oh, OK." then why don't you speak to him and call me back when you have it sorted?
"Because," he said patiently, as if addressing a very small child, "I need you to go and look at it first and decide whether you want the fucking thing or not before I buy it."
"Ah, I see. OK, where is it?"
"Kent."
"KENT?"
"Yes, Kent. What's the problem?"
"Oh nothing, it's just a long way is all."
"Well, do you want it or not?"
"I’ll go and look at it." I said, defeated.
"Now, you must NOT under ANY circumstances let them think that you are on for the car," he advised, "Otherwise I will not be able to negotiate the owner down to what I think is reasonable. Do you understand?"
His question was quite clearly rhetorical and I breathed my assurances down the phone that I would do nothing to spook the dealer into thinking that I was 'on for it'. With that he gave me the name and address of the dealer and rang off.

This was fun! It had all the cloak and dagger hallmarks of a low budget "B" movie. I drove to Kent the following Tuesday practicing gruff accents and secretive looks.

On the way down, I stopped at Snodland, the home of Claremont Corvette, probably the largest dealer in the UK. Run by Tom Faulkner (the same one who had owned Eric Burden's car all those years before), they always a have a fine selection of cars to see and I couldn't resist calling in. The only one that took my fancy was a 1968 big-block but it was way out of my price range so I had a coffee and resumed my odyssey.

The dealer was hard to find. Hidden out of the way in a tiny little village in Kent. There were four or five Corvettes in various states of repair parked outside. However, no sign of the car which I had been sent to look at. All I knew was that it was a blue 1970 Coupe. There were no blue cars out front. I walked around the back of the seemingly deserted premises to find another couple of tired looking cars, one white and the other yellow. Where the bloody hell was it? In desperation I opened the wooden door into the little parts department. It was bigger than it looked from the outside, but still smaller than my lounge. God knows how they'd managed to get it in there, but squeezed into the area between the parts counter and the wall was a beautiful blue 1970 Big-Block Coupe. It was love at first sight. As casually as I could I walked over to it and began to take it all in. What was immediately apparent was that while most of the car was there, a lot was missing. The interior was a mass of twisted wiring and the dashboard and door trims loudly proclaimed their absence. However, the bodywork was concourse, as was the running gear. The car was obviously an unfinished restoration project. The garage owner, noticing my presence, was alongside me as quick as a racing snake. "Isn't she lovely?" he cooed.
"Yes, but I'm looking for a complete one" I replied.
"I can have her on the road in a week if you're interested." He said.
"N-n-no thanks," I stammered, "I really don't think that it's the car for me." I said and made a bolt for the door and freedom.
Once safely back on the road north, I phoned my man and told him that I wanted the car. I drove home trying to fix every detail of what I had seen in my mind before it slipped away.

My man duly bought the car and a few weeks later, sold it on to me "as seen". I did look at the car again before I bought it though. By this time it had been trailered to a house in deepest Lincolnshire. This is where the story gets a bit spooky. I arrived at the house to find the Corvette parked in a massive four bay garage. It had been rolled back so that its tail was sticking out into the sunshine. This was the first time that I had seen it from the rear. It had been impossible to see either the front or the rear where it was shoehorned into the little parts-department in Kent. Something immediately clicked in my mind but at that precise instant I didn't know what it was, just a strange momentary feeling of Déjà vu, which soon passed. I looked at the car and photographed it in some detail before promising to phone with my decision. Over the next day or two we argued back and forth over the price but he had me and he knew it. In the end I agreed to his asking price and had the car shipped off to Corvette Kingdom near Norwich. Here it would have the final restoration work done and be made road-ready by the venerable Ray Groves, a Corvette expert of some thirty years. It was only when the photographs came back that it dawned on me what had been bothering me. One of the snaps was a square-on shot of the rear of the car and there, for all the world to see was the registration plate. XHH 58H. Yes, I had bought the car that I had seen all those years before with my Dad in Prudoe. It was Blue now, and that was what had misled me. I asked Ray to check on the body stamping to see what the original paint code was and sure enough, when the car left the factory in April 1970, it had been silver.

It was like coming home...

ps.... you can see me and XHH at Rockingham race circuit on sunday 6th July. Along with 14 other Corvettes we're doing a procession lap before the NASCAR race. They said we might even be on telly!!
 

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