Posted on 10/28/2014 8:09:09 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
Peter Max was not a car guy. So when he purchased a collection of 36 Chevrolet Corvettes, one from every year of manufacture up until 1989, he had a very specific plan: He would use this slice of American history as a tool to self-promote his work as an artist, painting the machines in lurid colors while staging them in various oddball scenarios only the most expressive of minds could envision.
Only that never happened. Instead, Max left his collection in a New York City storage lot, which is where they've lived for a quarter of a century, sat gathering inches of dust, moved only when switching from one storage location to another. However, that is all about to change, as the cars are now under new ownership – one that will lovingly restore the 'Vettes and get them back on the road.
The story of how Max acquired the cars began in 1989, when music network VH1 held a contest to award a lucky viewer with a Corvette from every year of the model's existence, from 1953 to 1989. Hemmings reports that VH1 purchased the cars for $610,000, and made its money back by creating a 900 number and charging contestants $2.00 per phone call to enter.
Placing just one call, Dennis Amodeo, a carpenter from Long Island, won the prize. Shortly after receiving his army of Corvettes, Amodeo received a call from Max who had seen the collection at an auto show in 1990. Max stated that he wished to purchase the cars, and at a meet in New York City, the two hashed out a deal that reportedly included $250,000 in cash, $250,000 worth of Max's artwork and an agreement that if Max ever sold the cars, Amodeo would receive a portion of the proceeds, up to $1 million.
I’d take the ‘64 ... for personal reasons.
I agree!
“Which one would you take if you could only have one?”
1978 of course. 190hp weasing 350 V8. ;-) Not.
A ‘57, ‘59, ‘62, ‘63, ‘64, ‘67, ‘69, or a 2006 if there was one.
See photo at post #16. Scroll over to see the right half of the photo.
It's the concept car that launched the Nomad wagons.
Nice!
Something just wrong with owning a Corvette, and it being white.
“And now I much prefer sitting upright in my minivan while the young folks are lying stretched out flat in their Corvettes about an inch from the pavement. It’s called getting older.”
And I have a friend age 66, who is getting back in a few days from a 75 day tour of the USA, in his 2014 Corvette convertible.
He and his wife pack make do with the clothes and laptop he can fit into the trunk.
They have done it before, and love it.
A minivan wouldn’t work for me, but a nice high performance sport sedan or wagon sure would.
BTW the Vette wagon Nomad upthread is very, very cool.
Probably not. "Dead Man's Curve" came out six years later.
To me, it's a downright silly song. Having lived on Sunset Blvd., on the Sunset Strip, I can't imagine a drag race along Sunset from Vine Street in Hollywood to Dead Man's Curve, a hazardous curve near Westwood Blvd., where Sunset runs past UCLA, about 10 miles to the west. Sunset Blvd. is choked with traffic 24/7.
In any case, "Corvette" by the Corvettes uses a melody very similar to that of the Crows' 1953 hit Gee.
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