Photos by: Chadly Johnson
Text by: Rex Marshall
So let’s say you’ve been restoring vintage corvettes to the highest “numbers matching” level for the past few decades and it’s all becoming a bit predictable. You simply build it like the book says with no room for deviation. Job done. No innovation. No improvisation. No imagination. What do you do for artistic expression? Perhaps interpretive dance? Or Taxidermy? Well if you’re Rex Marshall of West Bountiful, Utah you rebel against the system and build the “anti-restoration” Corvette. Having owned many styles of Corvettes in the past, restored and otherwise, Rex always wanted a Bad Ass straight axle Corvette Street Freak. There’s nothing that looks more intimidating than that nose high drag race “Gasser” look.
After many years of doing restorations Rex had collected a substantial pile of cast off second rate parts that weren’t good enough for a top quality restoration but were still perfectly adequate for use on a hot rod. Those along with the purchase of a partial Corvette body and frame out of the local newspaper (remember when newspapers had want ads?) became the basis for the car you see on these pages. Shortly after getting his new acquisition home Rex was presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse for the frame, and realizing he wasn’t going to be using a large portion of it anyway after cutting off the front portion for the straight axle and modifying the rear section, he sold it and recovered a substantial percentage of his initial investment. The remaining body, from the firewall back, had been stripped of everything that could possibly be removed before Rex got it and needed some extensive body work. After the fiberglass work was roughed in Rex flipped it over to clean and tidy up the underside of the body. While looking at the upside down body on his garage floor he was struck with the idea that now would be the perfect time to build the frame, on top of the upside down body, thus not having to struggle with fitting pieces up under the car and trying to weld at awkward overhead angles. It worked brilliantly! Not having to fight gravity, work progressed at a rapid pace. The chassis materialized in the matter of a few hours. With the front axle kit supplied by Speedway Motors and the rear end suspended by Chassis Engineering coil overs and held in place by custom ladder bars built by local fabricator Dekon Bakker. The chassis was simple and lightweight. And speaking of light weight, Rex cut 120 two and three inch holes in the frame rails, emulating the “Swiss cheese” race car look of the 60’s when it was common to cut weight saving holes in everything. The main benefit though, is that it makes the underneath of the car look bitchin when you get down and look under it.
With the chassis done it was time to move on to the body. A new front clip was glued onto the cowl and the body prepared for paint. Rex wanted something the screamed the 1960’s. A Psychedelic paint job would be cool, but being the consummate “do it your self-er” he realized it was outside of his expertise. Maybe flames? No, too common. Metal-flake, that’s it. He thinks “I can do that.” but what color? His thoughts turn to a famous book from the early 60’s called “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine – Flake Streamline Baby” by Tom Wolf. Tangerine flake it is. A quick trip to the paint store with his bag of Tangerine flake in hand and Rex selects 2006 Ford Escape Orange Crush as the base color over which he will apply the flake. According to Rex the end result, while very striking, isn’t exactly what he envisioned, but in his words “its close enough, I’m not doing it over!”
Picking up the missing trim pieces off of E-Bay the car came together nicely. The interior features a set of 4 seat cushions carved from the back seat of a 1995 Grand Am. Covered by Mike at D&M Upholstery of Bountiful, Utah, the seats were a much more comfortable and economical alternative to the expensive and rare original seats. Vintage Stewart Warner gauges and a Grant steering wheel round out the interior.
The engine powering Rex’s Vette is your basic hot rod small block 400 backed by a 5 speed manual transmission. A corporate 10 bolt from a Grand National with 4.10 gears puts the power to the ground. Rex fabricated a set of fender well headers from a Speedway kit, greatly enhancing the cars already aggressive appearance. Care was taken to run the exhaust system inboard of the frame rails in order to avoid blocking the side view of the chrome ladder bars, and giving the car a clean appearance from low angles. The pipes exit the side of the collectors. The headers have caps bolted on their ends and it’s a simple matter to uncap them when the occasion requires it.(which occurs more often than you would think).
The tires and wheels of any build are crucial to the final look. These wheels came from a swap meet a year prior to the build. Rex was walking through the meet with a friend when he came across the two 15×8 rears. He stopped to look at them. You just don’t see 15×8’s very often, mostly 14×6’s. They were very corroded (looked like they were made of concrete) with the most severely dry rotted snow tires (you could see the cords down inside the cracks on the rubber) he’d ever seen mounted on them. He asked if they were Chevy pattern and was told yes. “How much?” $200 was the reply. Well at the time you could buy new ones for about $300 and these needed a lot of work. He told him He’d think about it and come back latter. They walked around the meet and bought a few little things and returned to the wheels on the way out. He had decided to get them, even though he thought they were a little high priced, but they were the old school ones with the deep lip on them. He asked again “how much?” The seller reply’s again $200. “OK ,I’ll take ’em” Rex says, and then he’s surprised when the seller says “Great, I’ll get the other two”. Rex glances at his friend who gives him this “What did he just say?” look. The seller comes back with two more 15×7’s. They didn’t seem like such a bad deal any more. The 10 inch wide rear slicks are by the now defunct Hurst Racing Tires out of Washington. The fronts are 195/75/15’s.
During the build, cost and overall vehicle weight were the primary considerations. By not insisting on perfect components many thousands of dollars were conserved. And by substituting light weight parts when economically feasible the total weight of the car came in at 2460 lbs. Think about that for a moment. Substitute a set of aluminum heads and water pump and you’re knocking on the 2300 pound bracket. Naturally, performance is Vicious!
