Читать книгу The Corvette Hunter - Tyler Greenblatt - Страница 10
ОглавлениеIn 1967, Vernon Turner, a salesman at Krieger’s Chevrolet in Woodridge, New York, ordered a 435-hp big-block coupe in the incredibly rare combination of black exterior and red interior. It’s now known to be one of four coupes so ordered, in addition to two black-with-red convertibles. The signature red stinger hood stripe and redline tires accented the car’s appearance beautifully. As a demo car, Turner drove it to work every day, but he also drag raced it on the weekends. A big fan of famous drag racer Connie Kalitta, who named his cars Bounty Hunter, Turner did likewise and applied “Bounty Hunter” decals to the fenders and installed black Cragar GT aluminum mag wheels. He also installed a CB radio, which meant mounting a second antenna to the rear of the car.
Kevin and his team at Corvette Repair restored the 1967 big-block coupe to the way Vernon Turner owned it with the Bounty Hunter decals on the fenders and the Cragar GT aluminum mag wheels. In this condition, the car scored an NCRS Top Flight award, even with maximum points taken off for paint and aftermarket wheels. The car looks mean with the red stinger, red interior, and redline tires! (Photo Courtesy Bill Erdman)
After six months, Turner sold the car. He was killed just a short time later in what is believed to be a mob hit. It has been alleged that the car was also used to run drugs and guns across state lines and shows up in several FBI stakeout videos and images.
The Bounty Hunter Corvette then went through 17 different owners and saw much of the typical 1970s and 1980s customization on its journey. It had fender flares grafted on, Motion Performance did some work on the car, and at one point it was even painted green with purple snakes all over it. It was fish-scale brown at another point in its life and had a variety of different wheels. By the early 1980s, it was typical Corvette red but retained its diamond-tufted interior, likely from its purple snake days. Like so many great cars during that time, its rare showroom form and interesting history had been left long behind.
The Find
In March 1988, Kevin received a call from Alan Kaplan saying that he had a line on a factory black big-block coupe with red interior. He said that he’d turn Kevin on to the car, and Kevin would pay him a $500 broker fee if he bought it. That was a fair tradeoff, and Kaplan told Kevin about an ad in Vette Vues magazine for the car, which was owned by Terry Golden.
Kevin went to see the car and ascertain its original setup because the car had by then been painted, customized, and was running headers and mag wheels. He opened the gas cap, removed the rubber boot, and shined his flashlight into the tank itself to read the original tank sticker, which was still glued in place. The car checked all the boxes: Tuxedo Black paint, red vinyl trim, 435 Turbo-Jet engine, 4:11 rear end, factory sidepipes, power steering, power brakes, power windows, and redline tires.
At the time, Kevin had never heard of another black/red 435 coupe. In fact, this car was the only known, documented one in existence. “The car had amazing options,” he says. “The codes were very important to me, and black happens to be my favorite color. Knowing that black is the rarest color for that year (they only made 815 black cars), how many are 435s? How many have all the special options?”
With the goal of buying and restoring an extra-special car to the highest possible caliber, Kevin had been saving every cent he made, waiting for the right opportunity to come along. “A black and red 435 coupe with sidepipes; you can’t get much better than that,” he says. “So I purchased the car for $19,600 and couldn’t get the money out fast enough!”
While undertaking the initial restoration, which saw the body and chassis restored separately, Kevin hired private investigator David Reisner to track down the history of the unique car. “Somebody had to order this car special because of all these options,” he points out. “You don’t get all these options on a 435 car, especially power steering and all the goodies on it.”
Reisner traced the car back through 17 owners, with the original dealership already being known due to the dealer zone number on the gas tank sticker. Reisner even found a few old black and white photographs of the car on the dealership floor in its Bounty Hunter trim.
“We gotta restore the car just the way it is on the showroom floor,” Kevin says. “What a great piece of history!”
Life As a Driveable Chassis
The Corvette Repair crew did an initial body-on restoration of Bounty Hunter, which included the removal of the fender flares and the addition of a complete New Old Stock (NOS) GM nose. Kevin brought it out for its first public appearance at the 1988 National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS) National Convention. The event had a drag racing portion held at Maple Grove Raceway, and because the car started life as a drag racer, it made the perfect setting for its launch into the limelight.
Kevin’s longtime friend, customer, and mentor Ed Mueller showed up with Grand Sport #2, which he had just purchased for $800,000. Kevin estimates that car’s value at nearly $10 million today. “So I’m seeing all these cars racing down the dragstrip, and I wanted to take this car and race against the Grand Sport,” Kevin says. “I was egging Ed on: ‘Let’s see that ****box Grand Sport you just purchased; let’s go drag race!’ He said, ‘Kevin, I don’t want to embarrass you; this car’s got half the weight, but if you want to race, you’re on!’
The Bounty Hunter Corvette has no clothes! While it may not look like much to most people, the Tri-Power air cleaner and sidepipes hint that this car is something special. Take note of the valve cover signed by Zora Arkus-Duntov as well as “Zora” written on the frame by Kevin’s knee.
You didn’t think the drivable chassis was just for show, did you? Here’s Kevin ripping down the street by Corvette Repair. One can only imagine the incredible sound emanating from those sidepipes!
“So we go down the dragstrip and what does he do? He blows right by me, I hit a patch of antifreeze, and I punch the car right into the guardrail. The car starts smoking in the front; people thought it was on fire. I was so embarrassed that I crashed the car going in a straight line that I had my head down against the steering wheel. We just put this brand-new GM NOS nose on the car that cost me a small fortune. People were yelling, ‘Get out of the car!’ I said, ‘I’m not getting out of the car, I’m too embarrassed. I can’t believe I crashed this damn car.’
“Eventually they had to pull me out because they thought it was on fire. What happened was, when I hit the guardrail, the lower hose fell off the car and all this hot steam’s coming out of it. People thought it was actual smoke from a fire.”
Kevin was bestowed a special award that year for crashing the car, since the Bounty Hunter versus Grand Sport race had drawn a massive crowd of spectators. As Kevin likes to remember it: “I crashed it going against one of the greatest Corvettes in history.”
Because the car needed a major rebuild after the accident, the Corvette Repair crew this time separated the body from the chassis and initiated a total, painstaking restoration on each component individually.
Kevin’s father, who worked for the New York Times for 32 years, told him early on in his business, “Kevin, you gotta come up with a niche. You have to do something that’s never been done.”
What could Kevin bring to the Corvette hobby, and the automotive world, that no one had seen before? How could he leave his mark while taking his business to a whole new level that he had only dreamed of? Unforeseen as the great idea his father had urged him to deliver, Kevin began taking the restored rolling chassis to local shows. It garnered plenty of interest, as most people are only used to seeing the finished product of a restoration, even though “85 percent of the workmanship is underneath the car.”
“I did that a couple of times, but I got tired of pushing that damn thing around. I wondered how much more I really had to do on it to make it driveable. Put a seat in it, put a master cylinder in it, some wiring, bumpers? That’s exactly what we’ll do, we’ll make a driveable chassis.”
A local Chevrolet dealership car show would be the place to gauge reactions to a driveable-chassis Corvette. Loving to give fellow car enthusiasts and spectators a show, Kevin unloaded the driveable chassis, which wasn’t street legal, a block away from the dealership and proceeded to drive it at 40 mph back and forth past the show.
“The entire crowd left the show and watched me drive this creation up and down the highway for about eight or nine minutes. Then I finally drove into the show and the crowd was around that thing the whole time. I thought, ‘You know, I think I got something here.’ People were blown away. Not only was the craftsmanship excellent, everything was functional and driveable. So now we had something.”
Kevin Mackay and his Corvette Repair shop was instantly on the map. They brought the driveable chassis to all the national shows, making it one of the most photographed cars in the 1980s. He continued to promote it, and fans continued to go crazy for it. “They heard about it, they read about it, they saw it. It’s a win-win situation for all,” he says. “It’s good for me as the owner of the car, it’s good for my business because of the exposure, and people get an education seeing the inner workings of a Corvette.
“My competitors didn’t know where I came from. When I brought this thing to the national level, I brought it out exposed. It’s like having a girl take her clothes off and walk down the beach. Everyone’s going to look. If she had her clothes on, eh, they’d probably look at her if she’s a cutie. Imagine being a cutie with no clothes on; you’re going to get a lot more looks.
“I was really exposed with this chassis, so I had to make sure that whoever looked at this thing, I had to make a lasting impression on them, whether it was a potential customer or a guy wanting to learn what went where and how things mounted. But I really got off when I saw well-known restorers taking notes and taking photographs. I knew we had something there and I knew I had to take every creation to another level.
“I want to be the guy who pushes the envelope at all times. I thrive on the challenge, and I thrive on the competition. I’m a very bad sore loser. If I go there, I go there to win. I want to make sure that I’m very proud of what my staff and I have done and achieved. So I always push the envelope, and it’s fun. To this day I haven’t lost my drive. After 33 years, I still love doing it.”
NCRS Top Flight Award
With Bounty Hunter finally put together again as a complete car, none other than Ed Mueller purchased it in 1991 for the record sale price of $100,000. The Corvette Repair team campaigned it for him, showing it in the Bloomington Gold Special Collection, Chip’s Choice at Corvettes at Carlisle, and the Malcolm Konner Chevrolet Show. It took home a Bloomington Gold Award and an NCRS Top Flight Award.
The NCRS Top Flight Award proved to be somewhat of an undertaking by Kevin when he took the car to the regional meet in Cypress Gardens, Florida. Bounty Hunter was all done up in its special trim with the decals and the Cragar mag wheels. Kevin had the black and white photos of the car sitting in the showroom like that, and that’s the way he felt he should restore the car. The Corvette’s story was bigger than the car itself.
A couple of NCRS judges approached Kevin and the car on judging day and asked him what he wanted to do with the car. He responded that he wanted it judged for Flight. The judges were shocked. “You can’t do that!” they said. “Look at the decals and the wheels.”
“I understand it has the decals on the fenders and aftermarket wheels, but they’re part of the car’s story,” Kevin responded.
“It’s an insult to the NCRS!” the judges decried. “We can’t judge this car.”
Kevin was beginning to get annoyed at this point. He knew that the wheels and the decals would only lose him a few points on the otherwise pristine restoration that the Corvette Repair team had done. “Look,” he said, “I’m a paying NCRS member, and I have all the documentation on the car and everything required for flight judging.”
And so the judges went through the car and gave it near perfect points for the interior, chassis, and engine. When it came to the paint, they awarded no points. Kevin argued that every other panel on the car, the hood, roof, rear deck, quarter panels, everything else was perfect and that the decals were only on the fenders. The judges stood their ground and the car received zero points for paint, as well as a loss of points on the wheels, which Kevin had assumed.
That night at the awards banquet, Kevin was still fuming about the judging fiasco earlier. Many of his customers were in attendance, and it would hurt his reputation to enter a car and not win Top Flight. The judge who had given Kevin grief earlier that day went to the podium to announce the event’s Top Flight winners. Sure enough, Kevin’s name was called! Even with earning zero points on the paint, the rest of the car carried it over the 94-point threshold for Top Flight awards.
“They can only take off so many points for paint, and since everything else was perfect, the car still qualified!” Kevin says. “I threatened to paint flames on the car and bring it back the next year!”
“The car made such an impact in the hobby at the time that it was invited to go to the National Corvette Museum Annex,” Kevin says. “We brought that car down with the ’67 L88 Le Mans racer that Ed Mueller owned to show in the Annex, before the museum was built, to promote the future museum. They just wanted that thing down there, which was really cool. I was getting some really great PR with that car.”
The only thing missing from the way Vernon Turner had the car set up is the CB radio. The 435 hp Bounty Hunter looks ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. The “1967” license plate is a must for the non-Corvette people in the crowd, as any Corvette fan can tell a real ’67 from the center-mount reverse lights and the five-slot side vents behind the front wheel. (Photo Courtesy Bill Erdman)
Into the Future
Bounty Hunter is one of the small handful of Corvettes that Kevin had originally hoped never to sell, but he had to put his business first. The $100,000 sale to Ed Mueller didn’t go toward buying new equipment or another special car, it went toward the actual purchase of Corvette Repair in the form of buying out his partner, whom Kevin was eager to remove.
“We sat down like gentlemen and negotiated a deal where I would buy him out of the business,” he remembers. “To do that, I had to come up with some quick cash and, although it broke my heart to sell the car, I had no choice to get him out of the business. Bounty Hunter will always hold a place in my heart.”
After Ed Mueller’s ownership, Bounty Hunter went to another client of Kevin’s, Frank Perulli, and then another, James Korn, and another, Brian Skelton. The waiting list for the car continued to grow even after other black/red 435-hp coupes turned up. Everyone still wanted Bounty Hunter.
Recently, the car came up for sale at Mecum, appearing in its factory trim with “Bounty Hunter” decal and mag wheels removed. The car failed to sell after reaching the $350,000 mark; the owner was looking for more than $400,000.
“They took the history away,” Kevin feels. “That, to me, made the car really neat. God knows where the wheels are; it took me a while to find the correct wheels.”
Don’t give up hope just yet of ever seeing Bounty Hunter take center stage at a Corvette meet again. Kevin still dreams of showing it again, either for himself or a client, in its historic Bounty Hunter trim. In fact, his real goal is slightly loftier: “My goal is to show three black cars together with different color interiors. Have a red interior with a red hood stripe and redline tires; then have a black car with blue interior, blue hood stripe, and bluelines on it; and finally have a black car with white interior, white hood stripe, and whitewalls on it. So you have the three cars: red, white, and blue. Tuxedo Black and white are the only two colors that can have any color interior. The other two are out there, but there aren’t many. There’s a black/blue convertible that just went for $825,000.
“One day I’ll put that collection together. It can be done.”
