Look Ma, We're a Diecast!
Let’s start at the very beginning. In 1973 I had to have a Corvette so we started looking around Tulsa Town and went to the west side to look at a 63 coupe that did not have a engine or transmission. Didn’t matter if the engine was there or not because it was just what I wanted. And for the outrageous price of $1,000 I had it wreckered home to East Tulsa.
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Since I was in school at TU I couldn’t work on the Corvette until school was out for the summer, so I spent the next four months sitting in the 63 going “un-un”. No engine, remember? As soon as the semester finals were over I had an engine and transmission ready and into the Corvette it went. Since it was running now I drove it to work every day and parked it downtown at 6th and Boston in front of Amoco for several years. In the meantime, we joined the Tulsa Vette Set, which was a fairly new club at that time. We got into autocrossing and did a little drag racing with the 63. |
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The Corvette was black when I bought it but was Daytona Blue originally. I didn’t like the black paint job so it got stripped off and a new paint job was planned. As circumstances would have it, the paint job didn’t happen for about another six years. Didn’t matter, it ran just fine without paint. When the paint job did happen I was in a quandary…paint it the orginal blue or do something else. Well the something else happened and it became yellow with the blue stripes. Make that chrome yellow with light blue, dark blue and pink stripes.
Fast forward to 1996. We took the 63 to Bloomington Gold to have that experience which worked out pretty well. The 63 was placed out on the show field with the Mild to Wild Customs and won a trophy.
During the show we found a business card in the car from the editor of Vette magazine saying to meet him at the car that afternoon. We did and he asked if we would like to be in Vette magazine with a photo shoot? And we said? You bet. The pictures were taken at a little airport that happened to have blue hangers that set off the yellow Corvette. The whole photo shoot was a neat experience and sure made you grin a lot. So the November 1996 issue of Vette Magazine had a nice article about our 1963 Corvette.
That same day we had also found a business card from Dan Gale, who was the President of the National Corvette Museum at that time, with a note to call him when we got home. I waited until we were home maybe 15 minutes before I rang him up. He asked if we would be interested in putting the yellow 63 on display into the National Corvette Museum for nine months or so. Now this I really did have to think about because the Museum doesn’t pay to get Corvettes displayed, in fact, you have to pay your own way. So I’m figuring this is going to cost a minimum of $500 bucks each way and did I want to spend that much just for an inside Corvette show. Hell Yes. I said I would be glad to bring my Corvette to his Museum and show it off. Guy and Cyndi went on the delivery adventure with us in Cyndi’s Corvette.
The Museum people were great. We unloaded in to the Museum Delivery room and watched our baby being led off to the back room to get ready for displaying.
The next time we saw the 63 was when we went to pick it up which was during the Big Corvette Bash, which is held at the Museum each Labor Day weekend, so lots of activities and lots of people were there.
The 63 had been placed in the rotunda - the big round room with the giant red spiral coming out of its roof. The NCCC also happened to have their display in the rotunda during this time and the 63 was included in that display. The National Corvette Museum display of the 63 was over that Saturday night so we pushed it out of the museum after the museum closed, put a new battery in it and went autocrossing Sunday across the street at the Corvette plant. What a hoot, in the Museum one day and on the autocross track the next. We also got to put the 63 on a chassis dyno that Sunday and it made about 300 horsepower at the rear wheels which is about 360 at the flywheel which is what it was supposed to be from the factory.
Now flash forward to 2005 about February. Some friends of ours called from Missouri and asked us if we had been to a toy store lately. We said no, why? They told us that they had in their possession a Johnny Lightening, Chevy Thunder series, die cast Corvette that was yellow with blue stripes and a number 37 on it that they were pretty sure was a good likeness of our 63, the very one that was sitting under cover in our garage. Out the door we went and sure enough at Toys-R-Us there it was on the rack and it was indeed our 63. There was a picture (excuse me, Trading Card) included that was one of the pictures from the Vette Magazine article, so we figured we would contact the photographer and see what he knew about the situation. He said yes he remembered us and the car and the shoot and yes he had sent the toy manufacturer some pictures a while ago and had not received any money as of yet and was glad we called him to let him know they were making the car in a die cast.
We bought all of the beautiful yellow Corvette die casts we could find in town and when that was not enough we started looking on the internet and might buy all them before this is over with. Kind of neat seeing your car on Ebay, even if it is a model.
As a sort of not too funny part of the deal was that I was seriously considering painting the 63 that Daytona Blue this next winter. So now what do I do?
