1985 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe
Personal story and photograph submitted by owners Frank & Deborah Whaley - courtesy of the National Corvette Museum website - for participation in the National Corvette Museum 2008 Historic Motorama II.
Deborah and I stumbled across our mutual love of Corvettes in 1996. This discovery led to test drives in several Sharks, but we couldn't find one that "clicked" with us.
I finally said "I'd rather see you driving newer technology. Let's look for a Late Model at a reasonable price." After hours of searching the Internet we stumbled across a tiny message in an obscure location:
For Sale
1985 Corvette
24,000 miles
I suspected a typographic error; this was low mileage compared to other cars we'd found. This one was located only a few blocks from our house, so we wouldn't lose much time checking it out.
The original owner was surprised to hear from us, as he really didn't want to sell the car (his wife may have been encouraging him) and had posted only a small advertisement. He did mention that the mileage in the ad wasn't quite correct; the car had seen almost 25,000 miles. It was mostly a show car, still wearing its original tires. His den was loaded with trophies and photographs.
We nearly gave up several times during the month of negotiating it took to pry the car away, but it was worth the wait. Our Corvette Fever is now completely incurable. We became Founding members of the National Corvette Museum and later Lifetime members (but we kept our Founding member number, 4172). For a long time we owned only Corvettes (we also have a 1996 LT-4 Collectors Edition), but finally had to add an SUV to the collection.
After twelve years our 1985 still has under 70,000 miles, although it will cross that line on the Motorama trip. Nearly 6,000 of those miles came from the 1999 National Corvette Caravan, where we drove with the Southern California group. This car was also the 1985 alternate for the 2002 Historic Motorama, so another 5,500 miles were added driving to and from Bowling Green to attend that party.
We are very honored to have one of our cars selected to participate in GM's 100th birthday party. Since we can now never part with it, we'll have to get a lift for the garage to make room for the next Corvette.
When GM celebrates the beginning of its next 100 years on September 16, 2008, 55 Corvettes will be on display outside its World Headquarters at Detroit’s Renaissance Center. The Corvettes are in fact the Historic Motorama II, a caravan from the National Corvette Museum (NCM) which is comprised of one example from each of the 55 years of Corvette production. The caravan will depart from the National Corvette Museum on September 10th with stops along the way. People attending the GMnext Day activities on September 16th will be able to view the Corvettes before and after the official program.
Look at the next Historic Motorama II Corvette participant, representing a cross-section of Corvette enthusiasts from across the country.
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