When a relative handful of devotees of the then-new C5 Corvette came up with the idea of having a first birthday party for their baby in the early Spring of 1998, even the most faithful true-believers wondered if these guys weren't going a little over the top. Really! A new model that had only been out for a few months and these guys wanted to throw a party for it? My, how things have changed!
The C5 is now well into its fifth year of production, and just keeps on getting better and better. The '01 models, especially the Z06, have garnered rave reviews from everyone except the club publications for Porsche and Viper owners. And the Bowling Green Assembly Plant struggles to keep up with the onslaught of orders.
The same sort of thing holds true for what has become known as the C5 Birthday Bash. The first Birthday Bash, co-hosted by the nascent Official C5 Registry and the National Corvette Museum, drew about 300 of the C5 faithful to Bowling Green. Three short years later, the 4th Annual C5 Birthday Bash, still co-hosted by the C5 Registry and the NCM, and still held at the Museum, drew over 5,000 people and several hundred C5s from all around the country--and Canada--for a four-day extravaganza.
The theme for C5BB4 was C5 race cars. The racer display was headed up by a replica '01-spec C5-R (in reality a re-skinned production line C5 coupe--complete with automatic transmission!--but hey, it looked the part), DJ Racing's John Heinricy and Danny Kellermeyer Speedvision World Challenge C5 Hardtops, Reese Cox's MTI Racing/Mallett Z06, and Scotty B. White's brand new racer. Driving activities are becoming an integral part of NCM-hosted events, and with Beech Bend Race Park just a few miles West of the Museum, there's a great locale for both drag racing and some fairly high-speed autocross action. In keeping with the racer theme, this year's Bash included a couple of somethings new--an autocross school (conducted by Scotty B. White and several SCCA Solo-class champs) and a drag racing tech session/seminar/school, led by John Lingenfelter. The autocross school, an all day affair, was held on Friday--in the rain--and Lingenfelter's drag tech and school was held Saturday afternoon, when it was dry and sunny. Both were very well attended, the participants in both schools had fun and learned a lot, and both schools will certainly be a part of future Bashes. There was also autocross competition on Friday afternoon, and drag racing on Saturday.
There were numerous, highly informative seminars, running essentially one right after another, all day Friday and Saturday. A sampling of the seminar topics and well-known Corvette personages conducting them included C5 Chief Designer John Cafaro on "The Art of C5;" retired Corvette Platform Technical Manager Doug Robinson discussing "From Theory to Concept & Validation" with facilitator Jim Minneker; Corvette Chief Engineer Dave Hill on "Corvette C5 Engineering;" current, i.e. C6, Corvette Chief Designer Tom Peters talking about (what else?) "Designing the Next Generation Corvette;" Helen Emsley (Chief Designer GM Interior & Exterior) on "Corvette Color Pallette" with the first public showing of the new '02 color Electron Blue; "Introduction to Motorsports" by pro race driver and high performance driving school owner Justin Bell; and "Care & Feeding of Your New C5" with Corvette Plant Manager Wil Cooksey, Corvette Plant Quality Manager Mark McGehan, and Corvette Field Quality Manager Dave Peacey. Whew! And there were many more!
While the schools, seminars, and competitive driving events were going on, there were also new product demonstrations and installations, Corvette Assembly Plant tours, scenic road tours, and Corvette celebrity fashion shows. Friday's activities were wrapped up with an outdoor barbecue for all registered participants. On Saturday, additional attractions (sounds a little like going to Disneyland) included the Celebrity Choice Car Show, a commemorative brick placement in honor of the late Jim Schefter, author of All Corvettes Are Red, and the NCM/C5 Registry Birthday Banquet and Auction. The Celebrity Choice awards were highly prized, since there were several hundred Corvettes to choose from, and only a dozen and a half or so "celebrities" doing the choosing. Celebrity judges included Dave Hill, Wil Cooksey, John Cafaro, NCM Director Wendell Strode, NCM Board Chairperson Dollie Cole, and C5-R pilot Ron Fellows. I felt highly honored to be invited to be one of the judges. Perhaps the most interesting Celebrity Choice--and the only non-C5 to be picked--was made by Ron Fellows, who opted for local Bowling Green resident (and NCM Lifetime Member) Jim Rea's immaculate Classic White '76 Stingray.
In many respects the highlight of the Birthday Bash was the banquet. As usual, the food was good and the camaraderie with hundreds of Corvette enthusiasts was great. But, things get seriously nuts after everyone is fed and the awards are handed out, 'cause then it's auction time.
The Museum manages to get some incredible, in many instances one-off, Corvette collectibles to go up for bids. Some of these goodies are donated by the Corvette Assembly Plant, Chevrolet Division, Corvette Engineering, and Corvette Racing. There are also rare and one-off books and publications, special Corvette apparel that (like a couple of Birthday Bash "Celebrity Judge" polo shirts) are not available to the public, and some Corvette oddities that the more hardcore collectors find irresistible. Some of the more notable goodies that were auctioned off Saturday evening included a C5 hood and a front fender that were both used for test applications of the new, '02 Electron Blue, then signed by just about everyone at the Bowling Green plant, plus guys like Hill, Cafaro, Ron Fellows, and fellow C5-R driver Johnny O'Connell, who was in attendance. There was also a carbon fiber front bumper/nose cone off one of the C5-Rs that ran at Daytona back in February--complete with stress cracks and a severe case of 24 hour road-race road-rash. Bidding fever peaked with a Dale Earnhardt-autographed C5-R front wheel, still wrapped in a blown-out racing tire that the late racing great had flat-spotted then blown during his first driving session in a C5-R at Sebring last Fall. That particular piece of Earnhardt memorabilia fetched a winning bid of $10,000! Overall, the auction raised slightly over $48,000 for the Museum.
As the NCM has become fiscally stable, GM has become more and more supportive of the Museum, as always (since the Museum is a non-profit foundation with no direct ties to General Motors) in an indirect manner. This support includes donations of historical materials, one-off and historically significant Corvettes for display and preservation (like the world's only existing 1983, which we profiled in the April '01 issue), and one or more new Corvettes each year, for the Museum to auction or raffle off. Already this year, The General had donated '01 Z06 Number 1 (the first production, i.e. for sale to the public, new Z06) which the museum then auctioned as a fundraiser.
More recently, GM donated another new Z06, this one fully optioned and finished in Quick Silver, and the Museum set up a special raffle for the car. Just 500 tickets were offered, at $250 each, and all 500 were sold in short order. The finale of the banquet was when Ron Fellows and Johnny O'Connell drew the winning ticket. There were a bunch of truly antsy people in the Bowling Green Convention Center's main hall as Fellows v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y read off the name of the winner--who, as it turned out, wasn't even there!
It had to be 11 p.m. in Ypsilanti, Michigan, when Wendell Strode and Ron Fellows telephoned a sleepy and--at least initially--skeptical sounding David Horsfall to inform him that his ticket, the single ticket, number 64 of 500, that he'd purchased back in mid-December was the lucky one, and he was the owner of a brand new '01 Z06! What made it fun, even while the aura of disappointment in the hall was palpable for the hundreds of us still in the building, was that Wendell held a microphone up to the telephone receiver, airing the entire conversation, while Fellows humorously handled the call.
With that, the 4th Annual C5 Birthday Bash was pretty much history. For those who didn't have to be on the road at oh-dark-early on Sunday morning, there was one final road tour, and the NCM Board of Directors conducted an open meeting around the same time.
Birthday Bash number 5 has already been scheduled for May 2-4, 2002. If the Fifth holds true to form, it ought to be phenomenal.
For more information about next year's C5 Birthday Bash, contact the
National Corvette Museum
350 Corvette Dr.
Bowling Green, KY 42101;
(800) 53 VETTE,
www.corvettemuseum.com;
The Official C5 Registry,
P.O. Box 341023,
Merritt Island, FL
32954-1023;
(314) 452-2743,
www.c5registry.com