In 1967, Lees soon to be father in laws title was “General Superintendent of Manufacturing for Chevrolet Division”. Since he was, if Duntov needed something, he could go ask Frank for a favor.
So Frank (see his name on the Shippers page) wanted to gift his daughter and soon to be son in law a car as a wedding gift (at employee pricing). He told them to check the option boxes and pick a non attention attracting color to not raise any eyebrows. Apparently Frank was not flashy for anything. So they did…30 options. The deal is it has to have 3000 miles before it can be moved to the public world, so there are alot of dinner meetings for Frank which meant a lot of driving. After the threshold was met, he gave the car to his top guys to go over the car and the message was made clear….”My daughter, future son in law, and future grandchildren will be riding around in this car”. I think if they wanted to keep their job, they made sure it was solid. I
They found an spare engine they were using for mock up fitting, tore it apart and blue printed the rebuild and swapped engines (can’t have my daughter driving a production line used engine in her car). There’s no VIN stamp, and the ME chalk mark is still there on the head.
The convertible top was stripped off and a new test material for the Corvette was installed to see how well it works. The stamp on the window is H6, so I’m thinking that got replaced as well, being an O5D car.
They repainted it with a “show quality” paint job.
They built a custom carpeted trunk area with cardboard backing and spare tire cover too.
The black painted tail panel and hand painted (because it checked them) stripes were done by someone in the engineering group—he thought it was a nice person touch.
They retooled the machinery for Lee’s name. It’s a good thing it wasn’t Barthalmule or more than 3 letters.
The floor mats on the drivers side were an experimental “let’s see how they fit and look” deal for future possible use the Corvette.
I’ll be back to do an full underside documentation and some brake work on it in July on my way to the Nationals. It needs new tires, says it eats a master cylinders like candy, and a rear brake hose (no fluid to the rear wheels). I’ll also get better pictures of the things I might have missed. What I find most interesting is the parts that I never knew existed from factory building and are still there. Like those little red caps on the bolt threads that protect the radiator hoses.
No PTB stamps, but found the bottom of one under the circuit breaker on the firewall just like my 68.
