Tyler Townsley

Is he going to bring 53 029 too? Roger was willing to counterfit a vin tag for a car he did not have and faced with that fact and the existense of the real car he disappeared rather than face the heat. I do not feel someone who is willing to do the above to be a credit to our hobby.

Tyler

gscott

Google Roger Roberts Corvair, see Corvettes @ carlisle, appears to be same car with a respray.

Z51JEFF

Were you standing in front of a mirror when you had this conversation?................Im sorry,you stepped right in the middle of that one.Im done here,everybody knows what the story is with this guy and he aint foolin nobody.Whats truly sad is people that know the history of this car and the owner-builder cant look at this car and respect it for what it is or all the time,money that went into it.Those that know the history of the owner look at this car and can only see negative.What makes it sad is this is the first Corvair thats been built and it wont get the respect,admiration it deserves.You **** on people it will always come back on you.This car is tainted and thats the owners legacy.Thank yourself for that and blame nobody else.Best thing you can do is just go away,show the car and make some new fans.And do yourself a favor,stop telling people you have parts from the original car,your just diggin the hole deeper.Do you have these parts,hard to tell from your track record but I would venture to say NO.

C2Driver

I found this picture




on the back cover of this old Corvette book.





- Pat

jim lockwood

Here's a full color version of the original. It shows what a truly nice job is being done on the Corvair re-creation:



Jim

C2Driver

Wow! Thanks for posting Jim. That photo was obviously taken at the same location as mine. Even the old Caddie is in the top right of both pictures. Right Click, Save as "1954MotoramaCars".

- Pat

jim lockwood

Found another picture of the original Corvair, made at the same time as the other picture I posted. It's actually a better shot of the hardtop car and the Nomad than it is of the Corvair:



Jim

groovyjay

Thanks for the pics Jim. I'd love to have all 4 parked in my garage. It would be my own mini motorama every time I'd open the garage doors.

rayvaflav

How tall is your garage ?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/GMC-F...fCarsQ5fTrucks

Ray

sub006

The story seems to be:

1. Four young ladies are out for a stroll, and come upon these four cars.

2. Three of them each choose one of the prototypes, the fourth is not into cars and keeps walking. No one is impresssed enough to stay by the stock Corvette.

3. A guy comes along and hops into the stocker. He cruises by and picks up the blonde that had chosen the hardtop. This is the start of a LONG tradition, even a borrowed Corvette can be useful.

4. The couple in the stock Corvette turn around and make a pass in the opposite direction. The lady in the gray dress has abandoned the Nomad for the hardtop, guess she's a sports car girl!

5. The poor Nomad is heartbroken, swells up, turns into steel and finds many more admirers.

groovyjay

I just wish. I got to sit in one two years ago. That would be the icing on the motorama cake!

C2Driver

Thanks Jim! Another keeper.

- Pat

Loren Smith

groovyjay

I'd love to see those original prints!

Z51JEFF

Id love to see that third prototype,you know the only one that didnt go to the crusher.This guys so full of sh*t,does he have ANY credibility?

waldorfnomad

The location of these famous photo of the '54 Motorama Corvettes is the Dinner Key Marina in the city of Miami, Florida. Do a google image search with the key words "Dinner Key Marina Pan Am" for some vintage photos of the area. The Motorama was held in a large building near what was originally the Pan Am Airways terminal on Biscayne Bay. The circular parking lot where the Corvettes are parked is now the Miami City Hall. Why hasn't someone taken a Nomad and a couple C1 Corvettes (repro Corvair) down there and recreated the photo. What a great, fun project that would be.

Tyler Townsley

In keeping with the interest in the car, let's look at its genesis and give credit to those involved. The car came about after Roger and a noted 53 restorer discovered they both had an interest in building a Corvair style vehicle. The restorer, who has restored 9 1953 Corvettes to NCRS Top Flight and Bloomington Gold standards recognized what would be required and felt they could accomplish the job. The first thing needed was a mockup of the roofline. This was done by Rollie Yoder. Using a 1954 supplied by Roger he created a mockup of the roofline using 4 in. Styrofoam. After buying some 53 panels from Bob Mangold, Back To The Future Products, Roger and Bob struck a deal to allow Bob to make a mold of the roof and trunk from Rollies mockup .
http://www.backtothefutureproductsll...55.shtml#print
The restorer and Bob worked a month on the project smoothing out the top and preparing to pull the mold. They created molds for the top and trunk lid and In the end they made 2 molds sets, one for Bob and one for the restorer. The restorer then made one mold set for Roger. As you can see Bob has made available these items for those wanting to create a similar vehicle in a retro style, which would be my choice. You can read/see the mold part of the story here:

http://www.corvetteactioncenter.com/...ject-pics.html

At this point the restorer decided that he would be best served by no longer being involved with Roger and delivered the molds to Roger and parted ways at that point. Based on the pictures of the car posted by Roger he took the car and molds back to Rollie Yoder to be constructed and finished. (His shop is in the background in some of the pictures.)
I do like the car but feel we need to establish a better classification for cars of this type. In my mind our hobby has cars in the following categories:

Original: These would range from brand new cars to survivors (Unrestored but original.)

Restored : Most NCRS Top Fight cars of this era fall into this category, cars that were mostly original to start with and restored to original.

Resurrected: I place cars here that have significant damage, missing major components but have enough provenance to prove they are worth the expense of rebuilding/restoring.

Recreated: Cars built to look like they did when new but having no parts from the original.

Retro: Cars built using a mixture of new and old components that give the appearance of an older car but take advantage of modern drivelines etc.

While the above classification pretty well sums up production vehicles, some Corvette (limited production/racing/prototype) cars will not easily fall into the above. NCRS has a category for these cars and it is called American Heritage. To be classified thusly the car has to have a made significant contribution to the Corvette mark and you have to validate its provenance through a discussion and review of the documentation with NCRS judges familiar with that model. One thing of note here is the value of a car of this type, the difference between an original say a GS and a recreated GS is about 2 million dollars. Even here things get murky, as John Neas can attest. He has 3 cars that demonstrate the first 3 classifications, the Sebring race car, the 1956 SR-1 copper car and the McLean SR-2. It took years of research to develop the whole story and move the SR-1 from the American Heritage classification as a race car to a production race car that could be flight judged as production line race vehicle. The early life of the Sebring raced car still confuses me but it is now in as raced configuration with a most of its parts. I do not know where the McLean car would fall but it and the Sebring car have the necessary provenance to be legitimate American Heritage cars. The most important thing about these cars is John’s impeccable documentation with unquestionable provenance that he makes available for anyone to review.
As Jim Lockwood said Rogers car is a recreation of the Motorama car, not the first and definitely not the last. I would also question the engineering drawings claim. These cars were mocked up in clay first and a mold pulled from that mockup cause that’s how they did it in those days. And that’s the rest of the story,
Tyler

haccpguy

Thanks Tyler. Great write up.
Guy

groovyjay

Any updates Roger?

groovyjay

All the original GM photos of the corvair shows clearly the push button door handles, but the green car seen in this thread doesn't have those even though the builder had the blue prints... That's a neat feature I'd definately put on my Corvair, if I ever had the chance to own one.