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AJAUTOMOBILEMAG.COMA S P H A L T
T H E A r t h u r
(^) S
t. A n t o i n e
ILLUST
RATION
by
TIM
MARRS
FIFTY YEARS AGO this coming July
20, two Americans—Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin—landed their lunar module Eagle on the
moon. They were two of the 29 NASA astronauts
who flew on Project Apollo, the grand finale in the
challenge set forth in 1961 by President John F.
Kennedy “to achieving the goal, before this decade
is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning
him safely to the Earth.” Back home, the men who
completed the Apollo missions with such swagger
and success were partial to one four-wheeled road
rocket above all others: the Chevrolet Corvette.
To honor that comradeship of speed, the
National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, is showcasing three
Corvettes once owned by NASA astronauts, part of an exhibition entitled
“From Gas Station to Space Station” that runs through July 30. A friend of
mine owns two of the “Astrovettes” on display. One I’ve actually driven.
Alan Shepard’s ’68 Stingray convertible is there. The first American in
space and, later, commander of Apollo 14 (he performed the famous golf
shot on the moon), Shepard was a longtime ’Vette fanatic. Soon after his
pioneering Mercury spaceflight on May 5, 1961, GM president Ed Cole
gifted him with a gleaming new ’62 Corvette. Naturally, most of the other
six “Original Seven” Mercury astronauts—and many of the new arrivals
NASA was adding for the Gemini and Apollo programs—wanted Corvettes,
too. In stepped former Indy 500 winner Jim Rathmann, owner of a Chevy
dealership near Cape Canaveral, Florida, who saw the space-hero branding
potential and helped create a special lease program in which astronauts
could drive a new Corvette every year for the sky-high sum of $1.
Far cooler than Shepard’s ’68 is the 1969 ’Vette formerly owned by Alan
Bean. Along with commander Pete Conrad, Bean walked on the moon as
part of Apollo 12. All three members of the
crew—including command module pilot Dick
Gordon—drove matching ’Vettes painted in a
black-on-gold “wings” scheme created by famed
industrial designer Alex Tremulis. When I inter-
viewed Bean in 2013, he waxed rhapsodic about
those heady days: “What could be better than
being 37, training all day to go to the moon, and
then when you get off work you jump in your
Corvette and drive it around Cocoa Beach?”
Enter my Texas-based pal Danny Reed. In
1971, Reed—a lifelong NASA enthusiast—spotted
Bean’s car on a GMAC lot in Austin. He won the
thing in a sealed auction for “all I could afford,”
$3,230. In the late 1990s, Reed had his prize
restored to better-than-new condition by famed
Corvette specialist Ray Repczynski. In 2013,
Reed graciously let me drive the car for a Motor
Trend Classic feature. To me, a NASA-obsessed
kid of the 1960s who followed the missions live
on TV, piloting Bean’s beloved Astrovette felt like
walking on the moon myself.
A year later, sharing the new-for-2014 C7
Corvette, I spent a week driving from Florida’s
Kennedy Space Center to the Johnson Space
Center in Houston, Texas, with legendary Apollo
7 astronaut Walt Cunningham. Thanks to Reed,
who met us at JSC, Cunningham got to see his
old friend Alan Bean’s Astrovette up close once
again. (Search “Epic Drives Ep. 25” on YouTube
for a video of our trip.) Recently, Cunningham
and I caught up, and he reaffirmed his Corvette
fever: “The Corvette has had an amazing evolu-
tion. My first one was a 1964. The most recent
Corvettes have evolved from nice-looking to
wonderful performance.” Cunningham, who at
87 drives a 2015 ’Vette, joked that he’d like to buy
a new ZR1 but “the price is out of my league!”
Two years ago I got an email from Reed
that started, “Art—you won’t believe it.” He had
“stumbled across” the ’71 Corvette of Apollo 15
command-module pilot Al Worden, again in
Austin. He bought it on the spot. “It’s almost a
rust bucket,” Reed told me. Yet here was another
treasure. Much like Bean’s, Worden’s car was one
of a custom-painted trio for the crew of Apollo
15; Worden’s ’Vette was white, commander Dave
Scott had a blue one, and lunar module pilot Jim
Irwin’s was red. All three had red, white, and
blue stripes down the hood. Thus far, Reed has
done minimal restoration on the car—but it’s
now on display in Bowling Green for all to see.
Before his death in 2018, Bean told me about
the time he let his son’s friends drive his Astro-
vette: “Funny, really. They might not remember
anything else about me, not even talk about my
flying to the moon. But they remembered that I
let them drive that Corvette.” AM
THE MOON MEN’S
ROAD ROCKET
J U N G L E
ETHOS