My job affords me the opportunity to travel all over the world. However, no matter how glamorous and exhilarating the adventures and misadventures are, there is still something warm and wonderful about coming home again.
That simple notion, the joy of coming home again, explains much of the allure of the National Corvette Museum's Labor Day celebration. The Museum is adjacent to the Corvette Assembly Plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the literal birthplace of every Corvette produced since mid-1982 and for all intents and purposes the spiritual home for all Corvettes regardless of vintage.
The action at this year's event, dubbed the Millennium Celebration, began Friday morning with the arrival of several Corvette caravans. Complementing the usual warm hospitality extended to new arrivals by the Museum staff was the unusually hot weather blanketing much of the southern United States. Just how hot was it? At 4:30 Friday afternoon the engine temperature gauge in my new Corvette showed 114 degrees F-and the car had not run since 7:00 that morning!
Mercifully, escape from the searing heat could be found in the Corvette Assembly Plant, which offered tours throughout the day, and in the Museum, which offered a number of special programs in addition to the usual fare. In keeping with the theme of this year's show, which was Corvette racing heritage, the most interesting was a presentation and question-and-answer session with some legendary names from Corvette's glorious racing past. Included among the distinguished guests were John Fitch, Dick Thompson, Dave Morgan, Delmo Johnson, Tony DeLorenzo, Jim Jeffords, Dick Guldstrand, Doug Hooper, Doug Bergen, Bob Clift, "Marietta" Bob Johnson, Bud Gates, Allan Barker, and Donald Barker-a group that can count among them thousands of race wins, somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen national SCCA championships, and scores of class victories at venues that include Sebring, Le Mans, and Daytona.
Several slide presentations complemented the riveting stories that poured forth from the panel. The slide show that was perhaps the most interesting came not from a former racer but from a man named Bob Clift. Though his name is not familiar to most enthusiasts, Bob is one of the true unsung heroes of Corvette history. For many years, beginning in the mid '50s, he worked under the auspices of Zora Arkus-Duntov as a Corvette development engineer and test driver.
For those willing to brave the incredible heat there were many outdoor activities throughout the weekend. Highlighting the event were two magnificent displays of very rare Corvettes under giant tents on the Museum grounds. In tribute to General Motors' legendary extravaganzas of the '50s and '60s, the first was dubbed "Corvette Motorama." It featured some of the rarest-optioned Corvettes ever, with a definite emphasis on high-performance. These incredible performers ranged from a Duntov cam '56 and a fuel-injected, big brake '57 all the way up to ZR1s and Z16s from the 1990s.
The other big top sensation included a rich selection of Corvette race cars from days gone by. It was awe-inspiring to see '56 SR-1 and SR-2 cars side-by-side with Mickey Thompson and Gulf Oil Z06s as well as thundering big-blocks from the late '60s. And then of course there were the Grand Sports, which always manage to steal the show wherever and whenever they appear. Two of the original five made the trek to Bowling Green, and interestingly they were numbers one and two, both of which were converted to roadsters by Chevrolet early in 1964. Both were sold to Roger Penske in 1966 and went on to race at Sebring and elsewhere. Number 001 is restored to its Penske Blue racing livery while #002, which just underwent an intensive restoration, appears exactly as it did when it was brand-new.