Bobby Chestnut's collection of cars he's owned reads like a Who's Who at a musclecar museum: a '55 Bel Air, three GTOs (a '65, a '69, and a '71 Judge), a '69 Firebird 350 H.O., three '73 Camaros, a '74 Vega, a '76 Trans Am, a '65 El Camino, a '60 Bugeye Sprite SCCA race car, a '79 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow, an '87 Buick Grand National, a '70 LS6 Chevelle SS, a '95 SS Impala, and four Corvettes. Even though Bobby's owned so many examples of Detroit's finest, one car is closer to his heart than any other:his recently returned '71 454 Corvette. We say, "recently returned" because several years ago Bobby was forced to sell the drop top to pay for medical bills due to an untimely heart attack. Only recently did he get a chance to bring this Sunfire Yellow big-block back home where it belonged.
As a professional stuntman, this Jasper, Indiana, resident has been lucky to get his hands on some of the finest of America's muscle, but the allure of the elusive big-block Chevrolet Corvette always piqued his interest. Having owned a few Corvettes before, Bobby had a general idea of what he was looking for when he entered the buyer's market. He found two potential purchases on the Internet, but one was too rough and the other was a Bloomington Gold Survivor that simply wasn't a car anymore, but rather a large paperweight. Bobby wanted to drive his big-block Corvette, not stare at it at a car show. Dejected, he returned home and found this '71 in the local paper; it was a mere 10-minute drive from his home.
The previous owner had done all the dirty work, restoring the Corvette to its original working order, back to factory specs, but not so meticulous that Bobby would feel uncomfortable driving it. With the help of a good friend and a little haggling, he paid for the Corvette and brought it home. Along with the pink slip came documentation of the restoration process, as well as the buildsheet and a list of previous owners. Within the same month, the LS5 was driven to Bowling Green for the National Corvette Museum Show. There, as Bobby was packing up to take the yellow big-block to the dragstrip, he was stopped by show security while Zora Duntov's widow, Elfie, sat in a shaded golf cart admiring the car. She told Bobby his vehicle exemplified her late husband's vision of the ultimate American race car and wanted to display his LS5 in the Museum for a short while, opting to pass up the hundreds of Bloomington Gold award-winning restorations for his daily driven ground-thumper.
The Duntov isn't the only award that rests on a shelf at Bobby's home. But, as previously mentioned, a slight failure in Bobby's health caused him to sell the Corvette. He vowed to follow the car's trail, hoping he could hunt it down and buy it back. The car was shipped to Las Vegas, then to Pittsburgh. Shortly thereafter, it was handed off to a buyer in South Carolina where the engine was pulled for an extensive rebuild. The crew at Corvette Only in Greenville, South Carolina, replaced the interior with period-correct leather seats.
Then it was off to New York where it sat under consignment with Unique Corvettes until it was purchased and sent to New Jersey. Its new owner then moved it back to New York where Bobby befriended him. Chris Mizzilli later found a red-on-red '69 and offered Bobby the opportunity to buy the Sunfire Yellow convertible. After some serious fiscal rearrangements, including selling a GTO on eBay, he bought it back.
Now, Bobby is reunited with his gorgeous convertible 454 Corvette. He still drives it to every show he attends, and refuses to trailer it under any circumstances, much to the chagrin of onlookers and purists. "The Corvette was meant to be driven, and driven hard," he says.
Frankly, we couldn't agree more.