The interior has been disassembled...
The interior has been disassembled and painstakingly cleaned, but it's all original.
Enter Danny Reed of Austin, Texas.
Reed is a self-proclaimed "Chevy man" who has owned a split-window coupe and has driven Corvettes "on and off" his whole life. He first saw the Apollo 12 cars in the December 1969 issue of Life. Reed also knew about the special lease program. The Corvette was turned in to a GM/AC lot in Austin, which is where Reed found it. "I knew what it was," he recalls. "I had an interest in the space program. It's a big part of history, as are Corvettes. I wanted to preserve it."
Reed remembers the car as being in "reasonably good shape," but that it did sit on the lot for awhile-long enough for the tires to go flat-while the dealership tried to decide what to do with the car. It was finally put up for sale under closed bids. Reed put in a bid, and six weeks later, when the "winner" didn't come up with the money, took home his piece of history in August of 1971.
As you might expect, Reed has done his share of research on this unique piece of history. Though he's not sure where the black graphics were applied, he's got the scoop on the red, white, and blue logos on the Stingray's front fenders. "The initials 'LMP'(for Lunar Module Pilot) appear over the blue in the emblem on Alan Bean's Corvette. On the other two matching AstroVettes, Pete Conrad Jr. had 'CDR' (for Commander) over white, and Dick Gordon Jr. had 'CMP' (for Command Module Pilot) over red." The colors also corresponded to that of each man's personal belongings on the mission.
The stock L36 powerplant packs...
The stock L36 powerplant packs a healthy 390-horse punch.
Reed originally intended to keep the car hidden until the 50th anniversary of the Apollo flight, and only put about 5,000 miles on the car between 1971 and 1996 (leaving it with just 33,000 miles on the clock). The plan changed, however, when the Johnson Space Center discovered the whereabouts of Alan Bean's Apollo 12 Corvette. They asked him to display the car at the facility's annual open house, and that was a request he couldn't turn down. He displayed the car once a year until the year 2000, when he finally decided that he wanted the car to be "exactly perfect." In August of that year, he began what he calls "a painstaking effort, trying to get everything as original as possible" the yardstick would be the exacting NCRS Top Flight standards.
Reed took the car to Corvettes by Ray in Houston, where Reed worked on the Stingray with owner Ray Repczynski. Repczynski let Reed work on the car at his shop, which Reed did three weekends a month, even though the drive from Austin to Houston is two-and-a-half hours each way. Reed considered it worth it. "Ray knows more about Corvettes than anyone I know," Reed says. "He was one of the first members of NCRS, and specializes in Top Flight cars. He's a wealth of knowledge." Reed's plan was simple: to "refurbish and detail things that don't hurt the integrity of the car." The suspension was completely disassembled and detailed, a task Reed figures took 200-300 hours. The frame was cleaned down to the paint marks, which were then photographed to record their exact composition. The frame was then buffed before the marks were reapplied.
Reed had saved the original parts that had failed over the years, like the water pump, the master cylinder, and the air conditioning compressor, carefully wrapping them and putting them in a trunk. Ray returned these components to working condition and re-installed them, along with the original shock absorbers. The interior was "gutted," as Reed puts it, then everything was cleaned and checked for proper fit before being reassembled. The gauges were also disassembled and cleaned. Everything else that could be detailed was, but Reed cautions that it's going to far to call this a "restoration."