CLASSIC CORVETTE A RARE HOLIDAY FIND
Collector hunting for Christmas tree stumbled onto coupe surprise
Vancouver’s Mike Boivin wasn’t enthusiastic when his wife insisted they go to the Fraser Valley to buy a live Christmas tree. Mike, who has done show-quality restorations on 14 Corvettes, would rather be in his shop.
He wasn’t amused when the first two farms visited were sold out and the third was closed. “There’s a sign for Christmas trees,” Colleen said cheerfully from the passenger seat of their pickup truck. The arrow pointed up a dead-end road to a seemingly derelict property.
As the couple drove up the lane, Mike spotted a shape under a tarp that was familiar. “That’s a Corvette,” he yelled.
Despite Colleen’s protests that he shouldn’t snoop on other people’s property, Mike jumped from the truck and pulled the tarp back.
“Take a picture,” he said. “I know what this is.”
It was the remains of a very forlorn 1963 Corvette sport coupe with the one-year-only split rear window. The split window Corvette is one of the most sought-after collectibles, but Mike quickly determined it was even more desirable than he first thought. “I could tell from the serial number that this was a fuel-injected split window,” he recalled of the day leading up to Christmas 2015.
“What about my Christmas tree?” said Colleen with increasing frustration.
“Keep driving. You’ll find a nice one,” Mike replied. He wasn’t going anywhere until he found out if the Corvette was for sale.
To his delight, he quickly discovered the car belonged to one of two men who lived in a trailer on the property and the car had to be gone by the end of the month, just two weeks away. A deal was put together, $5,500 changed hands and the car with all the parts inside and scattered around it was loaded and hauled away. The original engine had been beside the car.
Boivin spent a year authenticating the car and making sure it could be re-registered in British Columbia, as it came with no paperwork. He was able to get the original General Motors delivery sheet, which shows the car was sent to HOB Motors in Plainfield, N.J.
This was one unusual car in Daytona Blue with a saddle tan leather interior and loaded with options: power brakes and windows along with a four-speed transmission hooked to the 360-horsepower, fuel-injected engine.
Boivin has partnered with longtime enthusiast Ian Mitchell, a Langley physician, to complete a number of high-point Corvette restorations, including a pair of 1967 Corvette coupes. Through their own extensive parts collection and contacts across North America, the two partners found all necessary original parts and Boivin began a three-year total rebuild.
“I found parts in 27 states for this car,” Boivin said. “Everything had to be correct for an authentic restoration.”
Through contacts, he discovered the car had been in a Vancouver Corvette repair shop with money owing when word came that the bailiff was on his way to close the business and seize all assets. One of the employees took the car out and stored it on the Langley farm where it sat for 40 years. No one knows how the car came to Vancouver, but some Corvette enthusiasts remember it from “back in the day.”
The car is now in better-than-new condition and back under the tree for this year’s Christmas celebration. The estimated value of the car is approximately US$250,000.
“The moral of the story is, if your wife wants a live tree, you should go with her anywhere she says to find one. You never know what you might find,” Boivin mused.
His Corvette partner Mitchell concurred: “It’s a joy and pleasure to work alongside Mike with his talent and expertise to make these important cars beautiful again just the way they came out of the factory.”
Boivin is now working on an even more desirable 1963 Corvette split-window sport coupe. This latest project is ermine white and one of only 199 models equipped with the ZO6 racing package, which includes the fuel-injected engine, stiffer suspension and very special racing brakes. Stay tuned for this restoration to debut.
Maybe next year will be a white Christmas.