When Did You First Notice Corvettes?
The '58 pictured below was my dream car when I was a kid
In my very early teens, my dad ran a garage and body shop next to our house. A self-taught mechanic and body repair man, he had customers coming from all over the area, and I had started to notice the styling of cars around that time.
But a real turning point came in my early teens; in the late spring of that year, I came home from school and, to my surprise, saw a small white car with styling that I had never seen before. It sat in the shared gravel driveway between our house and the faded red barn that had been refurbished and renovated into what was now my dad’s garage and body shop.
I walked over and admired the curvaceous shape of the low-slung, sleek convertible. As I looked it over, I was visually overwhelmed by the uniqueness of this car. I hadn’t ever seen a car with only two seats before and I wondered where the top was. It was smaller than other customer cars I had seen in the driveway and it had two red bucket seats with a four-speed shifter sticking up from the tunnel between the seats.
The rounded body had silver coves in each side of the shiny white paint, and above the toothed grille in the front were two headlights on each side. The taillights were mounted flush into the top of the rear fenders. The chrome around the windshield glistened in the sun. I was intrigued by the styling and fascinated with everything about this car.
One of my dad’s customers who came in pretty regularly for service and repairs had recently bought a souped-up late-fifties white Corvette. I think this is the first time I really noticed these cars. They were not at all like the full-size cars I had seen driving down our street. This Corvette was small, with only two individual seats, and it had a cool shifter sticking up from the floor between the seats. The instrument panel with all the gauges looked like it came out of a fighter jet. When the engine was started, you could hear a rumble from the exhaust. I became more fascinated the more I looked at it.
That evening, when the owner came to pick up his car, my father asked him if he would take my younger brother and me for a quick ride. I guess dad had seen me admiring the car. I ran into the house, got my brother, and was back outside next to the car in an instant. There was only one seat for my brother and me but I didn’t see that as an obstacle at all.
When we were invited to hop in, my brother moved over toward the middle and I squeezed in next to him and was barely able to close the door. The driver fired up the V8 and it thundered to life as I took in the instrument panel and all the gauges in front of the driver. I thought that this was probably what an Air Force pilot saw from the cockpit of a jet fighter.
He rumbled out of the driveway onto the village street and drove north into the countryside to clear the village limits, apparently having an appropriate destination in mind for the test drive. Feeling the clear, cool air rushing over my head while hearing the drone of the mufflers made me realize that I had never ridden in a convertible before and I felt a tingling of anticipation.
At the bottom of a very long, straight, deserted stretch of highway he slowed slightly, downshifted, and told us to hang on. He floored the accelerator and the car shot forward, pushing us back in the seat. I watched the speedometer intently as our speed quickly built and the air rushed by faster and faster. It was exhilarating as I watched the speedometer hit 100 mph very quickly as the sound of the engine, exhaust, and wind together reached a crescendo. To say that this had been the biggest thrill of my young life would be an understatement. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to have a car like this someday.
A year or two later, the father of a guy a couple years ahead of me in high school bought a beautiful white '58 with a four-speed. (The car was identical to the ‘58 Corvette at the top of this post.) By that time, I had become totally enthralled with Corvettes. The second generation had just been revealed, but I was still in love with the original style. I remember being so jealous of this kid driving around in this gorgeous car over the next couple years.
When I look back, I think that this was the time period when I caught the Corvette bug. I was determined to have my own as soon as I could afford one after I graduated from high school. I bought my first Corvette, a ‘65 roadster, a few months before my nineteenth birthday.