The ASAP C5 Corvette

"I said it's worse than that. There's a tow bar between us. 'Cause we had everything we owned and moved to California. That's when I decided when we got to California and set up we would build Corvettes. 'Cause I had to do my own. Of course, I messed with them before that, too."

Art opened up two shops, one in Santa Ana, "for a bunch of years" and then he opened one "on the beach for a bunch of years."

He "retired" in 1985, to raise his son, Drew. Now, he's back, and Drew, now 26, is part of the business.

ASAP is kicking off the ambitious enterprise with this supercar, which it might name Wolverine.

Why The PC In A Car?

PC's are routinely used to program engine management systems in high performance cars.

Art explained, "The laptop would be sliding around on the seat. So I started to talk to my partner about building a PC in the dash of a Corvette, a stationary one, kind of a personal project. And it started out as a really small 286-style with a 6-inch display and we just kept thinking the idea was a good idea, so it just grew from there. We got rid of the 6-inch. We did away with the 8-inch. Now, instead of just a 286 for data acquisition and tuning engines, we came out with a full blown, touch screen PC that does as much as a laptop or most desktops."

In addition, the PC has an Internet hook up. One could imagine this scenario for the future. You pull into a refueling station and log onto the Internet via its wireless connection. There, you receive and send e-mail and get directions.

One step further is Internet everywhere, while driving, same as you do with a cell phone, real Buck Rogers 21st Century stuff.

"We felt like we needed an eye candy car to show the aftermarket industry and the public that we could do the best," Art says.

When we spied this sleek convertible at SEMA, we figured it was based on the C6. Actually, it's a "send-off", Art says, for the C5. ASAP, in the true spirit of its name, just couldn't wait.

"We wanted to get to SEMA this year, so we built our car on a C5. We decided to go out of the C5s with a boom, to come up with something trick."

The starting point was a '98 convertible. The chassis is recognizable. The body is basically a prototype. "My son and I sat down and sketched it up," Art says. "Drew has a little Pasadena Art Center in him. He's got some little bit of Autocad training, solids modeling training. So, we both kind of dreamed up the design."