by John Gilbert as republished from SuperChevy.com
Retro Vette Madness

Dateline October 2015: The summer of 1969 is long over, but the traces of Corvette custom culture are as vivid in the pages of old issues of Hot Rod, archived online at the Hot Rod Club, than the nostalgia associated with Farah Fawcett’s titillating smile. And yes, Farah once owned her share of wildly customized Corvettes, including Farah’s Foxy Vette by Barris.

In 2015 an unmolested vintage Corvette is sacrosanct. Any revelation of a customized example from back in the day’s image hitting the Internet causes hordes of Facebook followers to instantly jot their disgust and share. Back in the day Corvettes were plentiful. If the designers at General Motors couldn’t resist cutting brand new Corvettes in half and gluing them back together again than who can fault the likes of Dean Jefferies, Big Daddy Roth, George Barris, or those thousands among us that took our shot at out-styling the factory?

What we have illustrated here is a mix of genuine General Motors designer styling exercises mixed in with a smattering of famous customizers’ works, along with do-it-yourselfers weekend projects.

Spoilers and exaggerated hood scoops were big with amateur Corvette customizers of yore. The January 1970 issue titled Jerry Volavka’s 1966 427 Corvette, “Rarefied Vette” we might have called it Nostrilla. Can you guess, or better yet do you know which of these cars are the 1959 Racing Corvette Stingray, the 1961 Corvette Mako Shark, or Bill Mitchell’s Scirocco? To get a closer look at any of these custom Corvettes, look to Vette on the Super Chevy Network, or join the Hot Rod Club and get unlimited access to Hot Rod magazine archives.

As they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so we won’t pass judgment on whether or not a particular car is a pass or fail.