The Corvette Hunter. Tyler Greenblatt

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       You didn’t think the drivable chassis was just for show, did you? Here’s Kevin ripping down the street by Corvette Repair. One can only imagine the incredible sound emanating from those sidepipes!

      “So we go down the dragstrip and what does he do? He blows right by me, I hit a patch of antifreeze, and I punch the car right into the guardrail. The car starts smoking in the front; people thought it was on fire. I was so embarrassed that I crashed the car going in a straight line that I had my head down against the steering wheel. We just put this brand-new GM NOS nose on the car that cost me a small fortune. People were yelling, ‘Get out of the car!’ I said, ‘I’m not getting out of the car, I’m too embarrassed. I can’t believe I crashed this damn car.’

      “Eventually they had to pull me out because they thought it was on fire. What happened was, when I hit the guardrail, the lower hose fell off the car and all this hot steam’s coming out of it. People thought it was actual smoke from a fire.”

      Kevin was bestowed a special award that year for crashing the car, since the Bounty Hunter versus Grand Sport race had drawn a massive crowd of spectators. As Kevin likes to remember it: “I crashed it going against one of the greatest Corvettes in history.”

      Because the car needed a major rebuild after the accident, the Corvette Repair crew this time separated the body from the chassis and initiated a total, painstaking restoration on each component individually.

      Kevin’s father, who worked for the New York Times for 32 years, told him early on in his business, “Kevin, you gotta come up with a niche. You have to do something that’s never been done.”

      What could Kevin bring to the Corvette hobby, and the automotive world, that no one had seen before? How could he leave his mark while taking his business to a whole new level that he had only dreamed of? Unforeseen as the great idea his father had urged him to deliver, Kevin began taking the restored rolling chassis to local shows. It garnered plenty of interest, as most people are only used to seeing the finished product of a restoration, even though “85 percent of the workmanship is underneath the car.”

      “I did that a couple of times, but I got tired of pushing that damn thing around. I wondered how much more I really had to do on it to make it driveable. Put a seat in it, put a master cylinder in it, some wiring, bumpers? That’s exactly what we’ll do, we’ll make a driveable chassis.”

      A local Chevrolet dealership car show would be the place to gauge reactions to a driveable-chassis Corvette. Loving to give fellow car enthusiasts and spectators a show, Kevin unloaded the driveable chassis, which wasn’t street legal, a block away from the dealership and proceeded to drive it at 40 mph back and forth past the show.

      “The entire crowd left the show and watched me drive this creation up and down the highway for about eight or nine minutes. Then I finally drove into the show and the crowd was around that thing the whole time. I thought, ‘You know, I think I got something here.’ People were blown away. Not only was the craftsmanship excellent, everything was functional and driveable. So now we had something.”

      Kevin Mackay and his Corvette Repair shop was instantly on the map. They brought the driveable chassis to all the national shows, making it one of the most photographed cars in the 1980s. He continued to promote it, and fans continued to go crazy for it. “They heard about it, they read about it, they saw it. It’s a win-win situation for all,” he says. “It’s good for me as the owner of the car, it’s good for my business because of the exposure, and people get an education seeing the inner workings of a Corvette.

      “My competitors didn’t know where I came from. When I brought this thing to the national level, I brought it out exposed. It’s like having a girl take her clothes off and walk down the beach. Everyone’s going to look. If she had her clothes on, eh, they’d probably look at her if she’s a cutie. Imagine being a cutie with no clothes on; you’re going to get a lot more looks.

      “I was really exposed with this chassis, so I had to make sure that whoever looked at this thing, I had to make a lasting impression on them, whether it was a potential customer or a guy wanting to learn what went where and how things mounted. But I really got off when I saw well-known restorers taking notes and taking photographs. I knew we had something there and I knew I had to take every creation to another level.

      “I want to be the guy who pushes the envelope at all times. I thrive on the challenge, and I thrive on the competition. I’m a very bad sore loser. If I go there, I go there to win. I want to make sure that I’m very proud of what my staff and I have done and achieved. So I always push the envelope, and it’s fun. To this day I haven’t lost my drive. After 33 years, I still love doing it.”

      NCRS Top Flight Award

      With Bounty Hunter finally put together again as a complete car, none other than Ed Mueller purchased it in 1991 for the record sale price of $100,000. The Corvette Repair team campaigned it for him, showing it in the Bloomington Gold Special Collection, Chip’s Choice at Corvettes at Carlisle, and the Malcolm Konner Chevrolet Show. It took home a Bloomington Gold Award and an NCRS Top Flight Award.

      The NCRS Top Flight Award proved to be somewhat of an undertaking by Kevin when he took the car to the regional meet in Cypress Gardens, Florida. Bounty Hunter was all done up in its special trim with the decals and the Cragar mag wheels. Kevin had the black and white photos of the car sitting in the showroom like that, and that’s the way he felt he should restore the car. The Corvette’s story was bigger than the car itself.

      A couple of NCRS judges approached Kevin and the car on judging day and asked him what he wanted to do with the car. He responded that he wanted it judged for Flight. The judges were shocked. “You can’t do that!” they said. “Look at the decals and the wheels.”

      “I understand it has the decals on the fenders and aftermarket wheels, but they’re part of the car’s story,” Kevin responded.

      “It’s an insult to the NCRS!” the СКАЧАТЬ