When Did You First Notice Corvettes?

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. I had started to notice the styling of the new cars around that time, and I remember being particularly intrigued with the taillight treatment of the different car brands.

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 been seeing 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 it was started up, you could hear a rumble from the exhaust. I became more fascinated the more I looked at it.

One summer night, the guy came to pick up his car and, much to my surprise, dad asked him to take my younger brother and me for a quick ride. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself.

The guy squeezed my brother and me into the passenger seat and drove out of town. On a straight, open stretch of road, he opened it up. The engine roared to life and I watched the speedometer climb very quickly to 100 mph. Needless to say, I thought that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

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. 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.