Longtime VETTE readers will recognize the name Marty Schorr. After a career editing high-performance magazines such as CARS and working with the legendary Joel Rosen at Motion Performance, Schorr launched a new, all-Corvette publication in 1975. It appeared first as a quarterly and then, after a couple of name changes to satisfy Chevrolet, it became a monthly magazine in 1976. Since that humble beginning 32 years ago, VETTE has grown into America's leading Corvette magazine.
What few know is that when Schorr started the magazine, he didn't own a Vette. "In fact," he says, "I had never owned one. I was more of a musclecar and street-rod guy. Once I started the magazine, though, I felt it was mandatory that I own a Corvette. I had always loved '67 big-blocks, so I bought a 40,000-mile '67 427 convertible from the Glass Car Company in New Jersey. It was Marlboro Maroon with a black stripe and a black leather interior, the 390-horsepower engine, a four-speed transmission, side pipes, and a bunch of options. It was a correct, matching-numbers car with lots of original equipment on it."
VETTE founder Marty Schorr's...
VETTE founder Marty Schorr's first Corvette was a Marlboro Maroon '67 with a 427/390 engine. To preserve the car's collectibility, Schorr kept aftermarket modifications to a minimum.
As you might expect, the '67 soon became a magazine project car. "I dressed it up a little," Schorr says, "but I kept it as original as possible, because I always anticipated that [its] value would remain strong. I only changed wheels once to put Dayton wires on it; otherwise it had Rally wheels. That's the way I kept it until 1999, when I sold it just before moving to Florida."
When Schorr delivered the car to its new owner, he had those pangs of guilt we've all felt when we sell a special car. And, like most of us, he realized he had just made a major mistake. "I was sitting in the new owner's driveway," Schorr recalls, "the sun was setting, and the car looked incredible. I had detailed it for the sale, and it was stunning. I hated to take the check. From that day on, I regretted being out of a Corvette."
Proving once again that while you can take the man out the Vette, you can't take the Vette out of the man, Schorr kept looking at Corvettes and toying with the idea of buying a new one. "[When] I saw the C6 being developed at GM," he says, "I decided that if I were to buy another Corvette, it would be a C6. Finally, I took delivery this year of an '07 convertible in Monterey Red Metallic, a color that's close to Marlboro Maroon. It has a black top and interior just like my '67, and all I can say is the car is absolutely spectacular."
Schorr's latest Corvette acquisition,...
Schorr's latest Corvette acquisition, an '07 convertible, wears a similar shade of Monterey Red Metallic.
So what made the C6 more attractive than the C5? "Not a lot, really," Schorr laughs. "The C5 appealed to me as well, but because I am still involved in the automotive business, and I'm very friendly with [GM VP of Design] Ed Welburn and [C6 Chief Designer] Tom Peters, I had taken a few tours of the Design Center and seen the C6 being developed. It just came together for me, and I decided that was the car that I really wanted."
Now that he has put some miles on his C6, Schorr has only superlatives for the car. At the same time, he finds himself looking for similarities between the new Vette and his much-loved '67. "The C6 is so incredible," he says. "I keep trying to make comparisons to my '67, which is unfair, because the '67 was a dinosaur. In its day it was amazing, but by today's standards, the '67's quality and performance don't hold up to the new car. The C6 is so good that probably 90 percent of the people who buy one can't really utilize the performance and handling qualities that are built into it. It's that good."