Think you’re having a bad day? Witness what happens when you accidentally set your garage on fire. You know, the garage where you keep your 1965 Corvette roadster…which happens to have its original fuel-injected 375hp 327 under the hood.
Corvette restorer and dealer Joe Verrillo of Prestige Corvette in Clifton Park, New York, purchased just such a fire-ravaged car from its hard-luck owner back in 2001 and spent until May of this year restoring it.
“Most people would’ve scrapped the car,” Joe told us. “It was seriously burned from front to back. But we used the original body with all NOS parts.”
The car has been transformed from charcoal black to its correct Tuxedo Black with blue interior. Less than 800 1965 Corvettes were equipped with Rochester mechanical fuel injection – the last year fuel injection was offered on a ‘Vette until throttle body injection appeared in 1982. Interestingly, this car was ordered with both heater and radio delete, so perhaps somebody had racing on the brain when they purchased it new.
We haven’t seen the car in person yet, but the plan is to make the Phoenix-like ‘Vette the subject of a Restoration Profile in a future issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines. Perhaps in the Hemmings Motor News “Under Restoration” column, too.