MANY OF US ARE
automotive gadflies, our shifting fancies dictated by the latest eBay listing. One month it’s Triumphs, the next it’s early Audi Quattros. But certain cars inspire commitment, a brand of long-term devotion that spawns communities of single-minded enthusiasts whose loyalty is akin to that of diehard sports fans.
20 Hagerty Magazine |
HAGERTY.COM
And just as a Green Bay Packers fan wouldn’t don a Bears jersey, there are le- gions of Corvette owners who couldn’t imagine themselves behind the wheel of a Porsche 911—and vice versa. What would happen if you took two gurus from the rival camps, figures indelibly associated with a particular vehicle, and put each of them be- hind the wheel of the alien machine? Would either become a convert to the rival camp, or would the experience merely reinforce lifelong predilections?
To find out, we convene at St. Louis’ Gateway Motorsports Park with all the right ingredients for this grand experiment. Rep- resenting the two sides of the Corvette-911 divide, we have a freshly restored 1970 Cor- vette LT-1 coupe and a coveted 1973 911 RS. For our drivers, we’ve recruited Corvette authority David Burroughs and Porsche ex- pert Reid Vann, each ready to try on a new automotive identity. For a day, anyway. Burroughs is the man behind Blooming- ton Gold, the Corvette certification process he founded in 1978. Gold Certification re- wards cars that epitomize a factory-correct condition for their year. Sure, swapping your LT-1’s rubber bushings with polyurethane replacements might liven up the steering
feel, but such minor modifications can cor- rupt the time-machine experience delivered by an original car that has its original flaws intact. Tus our representative Corvette rides on bias-ply tires and features a few pieces of historically accurate misaligned trim. “Every nut and bolt’s been turned on it,” says owner Mike Walter. “It’s back to the way it should’ve been from the factory.” Typi- cally for many Corvettes — which quickly went from new car to used car — Walter’s LT-1 has virtually no documentation. It was simply a well-maintained old car with one repaint a friend found on a used car lot in Nebraska.
Standing at the other side of the philo- sophical chasm, Reid Vann is the proprietor of Reid Vann Luxury Import Specialists, St. Louis’ oldest independent Porsche ser- vice and repair shop. Vann can glance at a seemingly pristine 356 Speedster and in- stantly call out all the areas where a restorer deviated from stock. Just as Burroughs is a human database of Corvette information, Vann doesn’t need Google to know that Stuttgart built 1,583 examples of the 911 RS, of which 200 were Lightweight models. Fortunately for us, Vann brought one of those 200 cars, chassis number 9113600891.
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