Paul McCartney is, well, Paul McCartney. And a Corvette is, well, a Corvette.
When you put the two together, you produce unimaginable respect.
For example, TMZ is currently showing a video of Sir Paul in his daily driver around Los Angeles – a blue C5 convertible – as he pulls into a loading zone at LAX to let his girlfriend Nancy Shevell out at the airport.
He even walks Nancy into the airport to security and gives her a parting hug, then walks back to his waiting Corvette where he shakes hands with the security guard for watching over his prized car.
When you’ve changed music history the way Sir Paul has done, we believe he deserves a break like this.
In fact, any billionaire who could drive any car he wants but still has enough respect for Corvettes to use one as a daily driver is one of the coolest billionaires we could ever know.
Baby, you can drive my car anytime, Sir Paul, including my red 1997!
In addition to home, hearth and family, this is the time of the year that car people reflect on the classics that have made the automotive world a better place.
We know Corvette owners want their rides to look as good as possible and our friends at Adam’s Premium Car Care Products want to help you in your quest for achieving the ultimate sparkle and shine by offering a 15% discount on everything in the store during their Black Friday sale. Now through Monday, November 26th, save 15% on your entire order by using the coupon code “BF12″.
The best news is you don’t even have to camp out in front of your computer or judo-chop other shoppers to get these savings. Just enter the code and save!
And speaking of savings, Adam’s has discounted some of their most popular packages. Click here to see the special Black Friday offers.
In addition to the storewide savings, Adam’s is also offering $7.95 flat rate shipping or free shipping on orders $150 and up. Some restrictions apply.
Corvette enthusiasts are pretty serious about America’s sports car, but car customizer Mark Towle really takes his love for his favorite car to a whole ‘nother level.
You see, when he was a child, Towle watched the famous Japanese cartoon show Speed Racer religiously. “I’ve seen all 53 episodes,†he says, “including one that was never aired; it was supposed to be the first episode of the next season, but the show got canceled.â€
All grown up now, as the owner of his own car customizing business, Towle’s living a childhood dream – making his living by building replicas of Speed Racer’s car, the Mach 5, which start about at $72,500. Not bad for the ultimate boy racer, huh?
Of course, for his special creations, he starts out with a donor C4 Corvette, which he carefully chooses. “I try to find the nicest cars I can, the kind that have been well taken care of for a long time,†he said.
Thus begins the process of building the cars by hand, and when we say hand, we mean only the two hands of Mark Towle. He does all the work himself, except for painting, and even insists on adding the graphics. “If you’re not a fan of the show, it is almost impossible to get the M right,†Mark points out.
Using special molds, he custom makes each panel from fiberglass and says his finished product weighs 1,000 pounds less than the factory Corvette.
But the cars are more than just a body replica on top of a Corvette chassis. They’re realistic. Towle even crafts several features inspired by the show, including a remote control “pigeon†that really flies, buzzsaw arms, and a periscope rear-view camera. Right now, he’s building the ultimate Mach 5 for a person who wants the bubble top, the jacker arms that lifted the car above the competition in the show, retractable wings, among others.
See more photos of Towle’s Mach 5 creations at Corvette Online.
A new home for a classic 1958 Corvette Convertible will soon help General Motors pave the way for Habitat for Humanity of Detroit to provide several new homes for families throughout metro Detroit according to a Nov.
We caught up with Corvette Racing’s Program Manager Doug Fehan at the 2012 Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. We talked about the championship sweep by Corvette Racing, the C7.R and the Grand AM/ALMS merger.
Corvette America has just about anything a Corvette lover could ask for this holiday season and to make your shopping experience even better, they are offering free shipping with no minimum purchase required.
From Corvette interiors, car covers or great looking apparel, Corvette America has the goods that will put a smile on the Corvette enthusiast on your shopping list, even if that enthusiast it you.
And if you’re not sure what your favorite Corvette owner has asked Santa for, you can order a Corvette America Gift Certificate by January 2 and receive an extra 10% added to the value of your gift certificate.
A man’s love for his Corvette has perhaps never been told more poignantly and sincerely than in this video we found on Youtube.
Car and Driver Technical Editor Don Sherman recounts the story of the restoration of his Corvette, not in sterile technical terms, but in emotion-filled terms that only a fellow car lover can appreciate.
Like so many of us, Don treated Corvettes as his girlfriend during his high school years, never mind the fact that he says he didn’t have a real girlfriend, “so as a substitute, I had a fondness for two-seat convertible Chevys of the day,” he recounts as he stands with his pride and joy, a 1967 427 roadster that he lovingly restored in the 1990s.
“It was sorta complete,” he says of the car when he bought it for $11,000, “with a mix of good and bad parts. It was running – I could drive it away, but it was really just a drivable basket case that needed to come apart and needed a restoration.”
The car had had a rough life as a drag racer, and the original 427 with three carburetors and 435-hp was long gone.
“So I knew this car was a great candidate to remove the body, fix the frame, restore all the chassis and suspension parts, and put it back together as an original-looking ’67 Corvette,” he said.
Then come the words that so many Corvette enthusiasts can identify with. “Restoration is an affliction with no known cure,” he says. “After you do one, you can’t wait to do the next. And you want something different, you want a challenge.”
As he holds a restoration guidebook, Don says “there’s a lot more satisfaction involved doing it yourself than just buying a finished car somebody else has put the work in, and of course for whatever work you do yourself, I mean it’s basically free. So if you have the tools, if you have the space, you have the time and the skills, you might as well do it. It’s a great thing to do. I enjoyed it thoroughly.”
Don says there’s always luck involved with any restoration.
“There’s good luck and bad luck,” he says. “I was very fortunate because this car had sort of a charmed life. It wasn’t rusty, and it wasn’t wrecked. But you don’t know that till you get it home and inspect it carefully and you take it apart. But that was the good luck I had. The frame itself was square, not damaged, not wounded, and it was a good foundation to build on.”
He still remembers the excitement of hearing the engine run for the first time. “The sound is enough to wake the dead,” he says. “You’re gonna have some wheel spin, it’s just inevitable from this time, that’s what they did. So it’s kinda refreshing to go back and remember the cars before some of this knowledge was gained and what’s been learned, that the driver’s crucial to staying in control, to using his head, to using the right amount of throttle and steering and not to put the car in the ditch.”
He admits the car is very crude by today’s standards “but light and powerful and great for acceleration.”
Perhaps crude but oh so cool. In fact, when Automobile Magazine compiled a list of the 100 Coolest Cars of All Time, the 1967 Corvette was at the top, so since Don worked there at the time, naturally his car was the choice to adorn the cover.
“The plan is to hang on to these cars forever,” he says, “and hope that my sons will take care of them. They own them, and they’ll keep them and enjoy them as I have. These cars become a time capsule – they become your transition back to different times when cars drove differently, they sounded differently, they felt differently, they performed differently.”
Before he passes it down to his sons, though, he’d love to take the car out on a Route 66 trip. “It would be a lot of fun to get this car prepared so it could endure that and take it on a drive to California,” he says. “It’s good to really not have a destination, to just go and enjoy that. It’s really a four-wheel motorcycle with all the sensory inputs and everything attacking you from the outside, but you’re enjoying it from behind the wheel. It’s a spirit of adventure in an open car and a chance to enjoy the road, enjoy the car, hopefully enjoy the weather. It’s kinda driving in its purest and best form.”
Looking to save some moolah this holiday shopping season for the Corvette enthusiast on your shopping list? Our friends at Corvette Central have several offers for shoppers located in the USA and Canada as well as those outside North America.
Corvette Central is offering free shipping until November 27th for US and Canadian customers (internet orders over $99 for US, orders over $149 for Canada), and 10% Off internet orders over $199 for customers outside of the US and Canada.
Corvette Central was established in 1975 and is one of the nation’s top providers of corvette products with 7 full-color print catalogs totaling over 45,000 parts and accessories. The company manufactures 3,000 of their own products from their huge facility in Sawyer, Michigan.
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![[VIDEO] Interview with Corvette Racing's Doug Fehan at the 2012 Petit Le Mans](http://www.corvetteblogger.com/images/content/100311_1.jpg)
