Some History of my 1962 Corvette.
As I mentioned in the main page, I bought the car from Australian "Rock Legend" Jimmy Barnes, lead singer of the band Cold Chisel. Even after moving to another state, and spending countless thousands of hours and dollars restoring the car, and even changing the colour, people still say to me "Isn't that Jimmy Barnes' old car?". Having a celebrity owner is a tag that seems to stay with a car wherever it goes.
The picture above was taken just after I bought the car in 1993.
Things to note in this photo are :
- the incorrect hubcaps (these ones were off a 1956-58 Corvette)
- radial tyres mounted on 7 inch steel wheels
- the exhaust pipes exiting just in front of the rear wheels
- the lack of the aluminium rocker panels
Things you cant see are the poor condition of the paint and the numerous cracks in the
body.
The hardtop came with the car, which was a good thing, but the softtop (and softtop frame) that were installed were originally off an old MG. It fitted poorly and looked bogus. I also got a second set of "original" wheels with some nice white-stripe tyres as used in 1962. These wheels and tyres give the car a real classic look, but makes it wander all over the road, so I've only had them on a couple of times..
After some investigation, I found that Mr Barnes seems to have bought the car in 1988 from a guy who specialized in importing early Vettes and quickly (cheap and nasty) converting the steering from left to right hand drive. The importer said he bought the car from "California or Texas" which does not narrow it down at all. There was a Corvettes Of Arkansas sticker on the window, but letters to that club, and the DMV in Arkansas have not produced any leads or further history on the car. There has been a lot of (poor) body repairs done on the car over the years, with a complete front clip and left rear quarter panel being replaced. I can guess from this that the car had a hard life, and was either a very unlucky racecar, or was owned by a series of bad drivers. The carb, intake, fuellie heads, diff and gearbox are all dated '63 or '64, so I can only imagine what kind of mechanical modifications and hop-ups went on early in the life of this car.
After being imported to Australia in the 1980s, the car was converted to right hand drive, as is the requirement here. It seems like the steering conversion (as with most of the previous work done on this car) was done very cheaply and poorly. The dash pad was replaced with some cheap red vinyl which did not fit very well. The firewall was hacked and swapped over, but there was more filler than fiberglass. A hydraulic clutch was used. The steering was converted to a right-hand drive system off an Australian manufactured 49-54 Chevy sedan, since the steering components of these cars was the same as on the Corvettes. When I bought the car, however, it had a rack and pinion. From my investigations, I found that Jimmy Barnes had had his mechanic get rid of the standard style steering because it did not work too well - one turn to lock when turning left, three turns to lock when turning right. The rack and pinion probably worked better than the first right-hand-drive steering conversion, but it was still a very twitchy car to drive. The car seems to have been lowered, wider steel wheels were added, and the old generator had been replaced by an alternator. This also meant that the old generator-driven tach had been replaced with a cheap electronic tach.
The car is serial number #1179, which was produced in October 1961. Apart from the fact that the car was originally Fawn Beige, these are the only facts that I know about the car and its original history.