1954 Corvette

After I sold the Studebaker I immediately started looking for another project car for myself. I learned a lot from building the turbocharged LS in the Stude and I was eager to build another street car with the same power plant. After toying with a few different ideas abd looking at a few different cars I came across this 1954 Corvette. The car was part of a large collection and it had been purchased as a project. He bought it and immediately sent it off to a body shop for paint. The body shop took it apart, painted it Polo White and then went out of business. The car was locked up in the building for several months while the business went through bankruptcy and receivership, when the owner got the car back most of the parts were missing. You'd be surprised how often things like this happen, it seems like body shops are the worst offenders for stretching time lines, ruining budgets and generally having issues.

At any rate, the owner got the car back and glumly started looking to replace the missing parts. He spent a few months searching and collecting, and then woke up one morning and said, "Fuck this I'm done." I got a good deal on the car, not great but good. Since it is missing so many of the original parts it is a great candidate for a modified car (or "restomod", to use the parlance of our times). And by the way, the original parts for this car are simply outrageous. A radio runs north of $3000. The original air cleaners are about the same. It's just plain stupid.

My plan is to keep the car in the style of a late 1950's road race car, but with a fire breathing LS based turbo motor under the hood.

The car is pretty clean overall, what with new paint and all.

The whitewalls have go to go, but they are brand new so I should be able to get a few bucks for them. The red wheels got to go too!

I am missing the original seats ($5000 for a restored set anyone?) so I will run some period correct buckets, like reproduction Porsche RS Spyder seats or something like that.

Looks clean but the body shop did a quickie job. The whole lower valence was replaced incorrectly and will have to be redone for the grill to fit.