garage. Once he knew this wasn’t just a
passing fancy, he decided to do some-
thing about his growing carnal cravings
for his favorite Chevrolet model.
John made the decision to head over
to Classic Car Studio (CCS) in St Louis,
Missouri, to talk options with the team.
CCS owner Noah Alexander was happy
to lend an ear and listen to what John
wanted in his Corvette. What John
really craved was a more modern driv-
ing experience, but vintage-appearing
ride. “I always admired the C1 cars.
They always caught my eye,” says John.
So Noah and CCS General Manager
Charles Crews looked at several donor
car options, finally finding one that
would fit the bill. It was only 25 miles
away from the shop, so the twosome
went to take a quick look.
That particular 1962 they inspected
was an older restoration of a base model
Corvette for that year. All the parts were
there and the body was in relatively
good shape with no prior accident dam-
age to speak of. They both gave the
thumbs up on the Corvette, figuring it
was a good candidate for John’s needs. A
deal was quickly struck and the car was
loaded on the shop’s flatbed. The project
’62 would soon hit the floor at CCS for
its transformation into John’s vision of
what a Corvette should be.
The Corvette was quickly torn
down and thoroughly inspected by
the crew. Like they thought, the body
was in relatively good shape for its
age. The main goal here was to create
a restomod-styled ride, using the ’62’s
body, but supplying a modern chassis
to go underneath it. Once the Corvette
body was separated from the frame,
CCS reached out to Roadster Shop in
Mundelein, Illinois, and had them put
together one of their top-notch 1953-’62
Fast Track chassis for the Corvette.The Fast Track chassis is built on
10-gauge fully boxed framerails and
uses the factory body mount locations,
core support and bumper mounts. As
far as the suspension goes, it’s built with
Z06 front spindles and uses large diam-
eter 1 5/8-inch lower control arms and
1 1/4-inch upper control arms in its
construction. To this base, CCS added
RideTech adjustable coilovers, a stout
Ford 9-inch with 3.73 gears and a four-
link out back. For stopping power there
are Wilwood disc brakes all round; six-
piston caliper fronts and four-piston
rears do the pinching on this wild ride.
While this was in process, the CCS
boys did the needed bodywork on the
shell. Since John was fond of the origi-
nal look to the ’62, very few changes
were made to the outer styling of this
plastic Chevy. One notable change was
going with an earlier ’58 issue grille,
something that CCS thought would beSo what’s the future hold for John and his breathtaking ’62; lots of
open road for sure. “Functionally it’s a pleasure to drive.
It’s one of those cars I can just hop in and point toward the beach and go.”46 VETTE 19.07
[FEATURE]
SILVER AND BOLD