Wade Mahaffey

I am breathing life into an old C-1 straight axle gasser barn find. While preparing this car for a new life as a NHRA, IHRA Super/Stock racer I wonder, where are all of these old Corvettes at. All of these old modified production cars....10,000 RPMs....4&5 speed sticks.....wheels up 1st 2nd and 3rd, you get the idea. I have mine because of my memories of these awsome cars. I guess some have been restored, or brought back as pro street or pro touring. I can't help thinking that there are some ex-racers out there just sittin with a quarter inch of dust on them. I say "bring'um back to life....for they are the sweetest cars of all time!" They are the good ole days!
If you know of one of these old racers, share the stories and photos!

Plastic Pig

The resto weenies have got to most them and made them all look like just like each other like the book told them to.

Mark_Milner

I agree with Bob, most of them have been restored. There were several years you could buy old race cars for a couple of thousand dollars tops, yet a restored car would go for $20,000 or more. I doesn't take too much to figure out what happened.

One of the items in the mission statement of NCRS is to preserve history, however, they apparently mean history at the factory door.

It was years and years before they began to recognize any race cars and then it was mainly the famous ones, like the Grand Sports, the Le Mans racers, The Stars and Stripes Greenwood racers, and the Owens-Corning racers>

Yet it was the Saturday night racers and dozens of SCCA road racers who created the legend of Corvette and made them famous.

And most were destroyed by people restoring to NCRS standards.

67L36Driver

They're on Ebay as original, numbers matching, frame off restored, low miles, yada, yada, yada.................................... ..........

Nitrodamus

and of course ProTeam...

Plastic Pig

Some survived to race another day.

Loren Smith

I bet more of them were turned into restomods and/or modified drivers than top flight cars. An old drag car probably wouldn't have any of its original drivetrain, so it generally wouldn't be cost-effective to search for all the correct number/dated components necessary to qualify it for judging, plus change the body and frame modifications, etc. You could find a project car with an original drivetrain to restore for less than buying a drag car and then shopping for a hundred different correct number parts. You see a lot of C1s and C2s that are restored and look fairly stock but have bigger displacement engines, 5 speed transmissions, etc.

Shultzie

I was told mine was a drag car back in the 60's.

TopLess62

They're not all gone...mine isn't an "ex" race car...its a "soon to be"!!! I sold my stock rear end and I am putting a 9" in right now. New motor and trans are in the cards. I will take the body off, but only to make the bottom stronger for the track!!

with Bob and the resto weenies taking it a bit too far. There isn't much imagination in factory stock unless there is a Christmas Tree in front of it!!

Jim Dillon

Wade I agree with your sentiments and there are few of us out there. To each there own and more than likely most of the cars on the forum are oriented toward the stock side of things. I enjoy only the performance end these cars brought to history and heavily lean towards the drag cars, as my baptism into the Corvette world was at the local dragstrips. I have an old drag car out of New Mexico with little history that I can find but my sickness is such that I could never take it back to any type of stock configuration as in my opinion it would insult what the car stood for. Loren may be right that some cars would not lend themselves to return to stock and may have become modified cars, although I know of a handful that were changed from drag racing back to stock form.

Dan Hampton on this forum has the Pizza Man Corvette, and the engine block is allegedly the wounded six pulled out of the car at some point. The green car (guess he did not buy into the unlucky legend too heavily) has a Grumpy lump and a guess would say early 70s. One of my favorite shots is this white and burgundy gasser being readied for another run-love all the win stickers and the injection-(I'd pay a good sum to find this car as is).

Then another two of my favorites is Charlie Wilson's 58 Vicious Vette and Mazmanian's 61. Probably my favorite is Kanners 57 427 Prontito, still remember him standing it pretty straight up twice in a row came down hard and kept his foot buried and still turned a 10.60 at Milan in probably 1968 (maybe 1969).

Keep us posted on the progress of your car-some of us need the fix-Jim

TopLess62

I saw something like that in a "Battle of Midway" documentary!!!

hookedup

This is as "restored" as it ever will be!

Dave


PS-how is that top fitting?

Donny Brass

I resemble that remark.......

Wade Mahaffey

Dave, that car is awsome! As I see that great looking wheelstand, I can hear the car saying "I WANNA BE RED!, Dave please make me RED, I need to be RED". I am saying that because I have on good information, that she's in the paint shop as we speak. The truth be known, that car will still be awsome in any color......Wade

Thanks to everyone for the great photos and stories. All I can say is:
KEEP UM COMMING.....I WANT TO SEE MORE....MORE.....MORE!

muncieman

Tell me your not going Stupid Stock racing

Been some time since I saw you, still have your old shop or did you build one at your house????

A transplanted southern Maryland drag racer

vetrod62

My car is still racing. Here are pictures from last summer.

MICK3

Here's a few that I had saved, Great Cars!

magicv8

in the Quad Cities they drive the old drag cars on the street

MICK3

#1 & 2 Connecticut Dragway, #3 & 4 New England Dragway.

Wade Mahaffey

Muncieman, I wanted to build a car that could do many different things. This car fits very nicely into multiple forms of fun. It can compete in NHRA and IHRA National and Divisonal events as a legal SS/LA racer. And it can compete as a Super/Stock racer at the Nostalgia events. The car can compete/attend events with the National Street Rod Association as well as Goodguys and Super Chevy Shows. We can bracket race if we want. I can drive it on the street and/or do local car shows. There are many things to do with a car like this. Now that I'm retired from the Fire Department, I have a little more time. I am still doing some fabrication, but not complete cars like I used to. you can Google my name to my site. The old Roadster I built back in the eighties and raced Super/Gas is still alive as a street rod, with a SBC and a 5-speed stick. IT'S ALOT OF FUN !


MICK3 NOW THATS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! MORE..MORE..MORE!