Dave’s Corvette Dream Comes True

Members,

Hello!  I’m Dave Steidinger, a new member to your club.  My wife and I just moved to Columbus a few months ago from Barrington, IL.  I volunteered to write a monthly column for your website, thinking it’d be fun for me and hopefully for you, too.  And, of course your feedback, counterpoints, and your own Corvette memories, observation, or advice are all welcome.  Just reply to the “Contact Us” down at the footer of club website!   So here goes my first column……

My first car was a ’67 427-435 Corvette purchased in the depths of the 1973 oil embargo.  Perhaps I have always been a contrarian and supporter of the underdog of the moment.

Or I just used to celebrate doing things the hard way.

I was born in 1954.  I’d been studying cars from just a year or two after that.  My mom said my first words were, “Look at it go.”  I bought and read car magazines since 1964.  And I’d been excited by Corvettes since perhaps four or five years old.  I always hunted the model shelves for AMT 1/25^th scale Corvettes and found/bought only a few over those early years.  My first was a ’63 coupe that my dear grandmother paid for, and I built it on her back porch in Cicero, IL.

My dad considered a new Corvette in ’67.  I couldn’t believe it!  He took my brother and me on a jerky test drive in a ’63 coupe with loose U-joints.  Yes, my brother rode in the rear compartment.  Later, my brother and I excitedly examined the red ’67 roadster in the showroom as my dad talked with the sales guy.  My dad heard they were changing the “body style for ‘68” and deferred his purchase.  And then he dismissed the purchase when he found he could not wear his hat in the ’68.  My possibilities as a less-nerdy seventh grader went up in a tiny wisp of imaginary smoke.

As a Purdue college student, I passed out of several tough Freshman courses, so I had lots of time to check out old Hot Rod magazine issues from the library stacks.  My girlfriend (now my wife) would struggle over her books while I enjoyed those formative issues of Hot Rod.  I dreamed of many first car choices.  Of course, a mid-Sixties Corvette always made my list, but with little expectation of reality.  But it was fun to dream. 

The April ’67 issue had a road test of a ’67 427-435 Corvette.  I told my girlfriend, earnestly, but excitedly, that if I ever considering buying one of those, TALK ME OUT OF IT!!

A few months later I was looking at ads in the Indy Star newspaper.  I called a guy with a ’65 396 Corvette roadster in red for $2500.  I had an appointment for him to show me the car at my dorm, but he didn’t show and later said he’d sold the car to a collector.

I called another ad, for a ’67 427, also for $2500.  The seller agreed to come to my dorm to show me the car.  Actually it was the owner’s dad who came by.  And he let me drive the car.  I promptly stalled it.  Do you know how easy it is not to stall a 427 Corvette with 4.11 gears?  Yes, I was embarrassed.  I later learned it would spin the tires if you side-stepped the clutch at a mere 1500 rpm.  Within 30 seconds into the test drive, I learned the definition of torque-monster.  I soon made a deal for $2300 with the agreement they would deliver it after I finished finals in December, 1973.  Contrary to my request, my girlfriend never tried to talk me out of it – she believed in me!  But the seller made the better deal, in the short term. 

Well, December, 1973 brought one of the biggest snowstorms in Lafayette local history.  Big snow, bigger drifts.  Semis were mostly buried on I-65.  They called in the National Guardand their tanks to free the frozen, ditched, drifted in, snow-covered semis.  Though the storm did not delay Purdue final exams!    It did, however, delay delivery of my Corvette on Saturday, December, 22.  The appointed time came and went,  Phone calls brought vague answers.  They showed late in the day, to pick me up — but not in the Corvette.  They took me to their garage on the other side of town.  They were finishing a starter remove/replace.  Apparently, the owner, a high school senior(!), let the car sit for a week due to the storm and then burned up the starter trying to get it going for the sale to me.  They got it started in the warm garage,  I gave them a check and left.   It started to get dark.

Of course, it needed gas!  I stopped to refuel and again had trouble getting it re-started, for reasons I learned and fixed much later.  The gas station was a real service station (remember those?!!).  They loaned me a big battery charger and it nearly fell into the big aluminum flex fan when that big mill got going again.  The station manager tongue-lashed me for nearly wrecking his charger.  He was right.

I went back to my college dorm to load up my belongings for the trip home for Christmas break.  Hardly anyone was still at the dorm except my friend, Chuck.  He wanted to see the Corvette, so he helped carry out some of my things and I showed him the car.  For some reason, I rolled the driver’s side window down and then back up, and it fell out of the channel, with only me to catch it in both arms before it could hit the icy concrete. 

I got it going, with idle apparently set at about 1500 rpm, and then out to the Interstate!

Felt like an arctic war zone.  Semis were still stranded in the deep ditches, mostly buried in the cold, white frigid anti-Hell.  Much of I-65 was snow-packed and only one lane plowed open.  There was little traffic, and for good reason.  I noticed how very quiet a side-pipe 427 Corvette was over snow-packed highway.  I drove on and on and made it to my parents’ home, 165 miles away and north, of all directions.  But actually, the highways got better as I progressed northwards – they had the equipment to deal with such a snow. The Corvette made it without skipping a beat, except when I had the courage to step on it here and there, and it misfired badly by 5000 rpm. 

The Corvette brought me home for Christmas and it felt like Victory.