A collection of 36 corvettes – some of them extremely rare - are in the process of being restored to their former glory after they were hidden away for more than 20 years. The Corvettes were originally won in a competition organised by music channel VH1 in the late 80's and were then sold to German born graphic artist Peter Maxx. The thick layer of dust that has covered the cars for more than 20 years has actually protected the paintwork meaning some of them need little in the way of restoration. When the restorations are complete the new owner Scott Heller will attempt to sell the collection in its entirety to one lucky bidder.
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00:00These cars are the holy grail of the Corvette collectors.
00:13We basically have a museum of Corvettes here every year from 1953 all the way through 1989.
00:21This remarkable chronological collection of 36 Corvettes has been hidden for over 20 years.
00:28Originally given away as a prize by music channel VH1 in 1989, the cars were soon bought
00:34by artist Peter Max, whose plans to paint them never came to fruition.
00:39The new owners are restoring the vehicles to their former glory and Chris Mazzilli,
00:43a Corvette expert, is consulting on the project.
00:46Some of these cars are going to need to be cleaned up, have the fluids changed.
00:50Some cars are going to need a year's worth of work and some cars are going to need two
00:53weeks worth of work.
00:56First we'll start off with the most valuable car in the collection, a 1953 Corvette.
01:01This car is one of 300 that were made and it's probably going to be worth somewhere
01:06around a half a million dollars when the restoration is done.
01:09The crown jewel of the collection, unfortunately for us it's requiring the most amount of work
01:14and we're putting a substantial amount of money, well over six figures, into that one
01:19individual car so we think by the time we get done with the restoration we'll have one
01:23of the most valuable 1953s in the world.
01:26However, not all of the cars require so much work.
01:29So this next Corvette is a 66 Coupe, it's one of my favourite colours, this is called
01:35Nassau Blue and it has a white interior and that's the colour combination it came from
01:40the factory with.
01:41The paint is not perfect on it but it's a pretty solid original car.
01:44This next car is a 1964 Corvette Coupe, this car originally was Ermine White but now it's
01:50painted Tuxedo Black.
01:52This car also has its original engine, it's a 327 300 horsepower engine, it's the one
01:58that the car was born with, it also has a four speed transmission and that's the correct
02:02transmission that came with the car.
02:05So the interior in this car was in pretty good original condition, what also makes it
02:10unique is it's silver leather and not a lot of cars came with silver leather interior
02:15that particular year.
02:17Many of the Corvettes are yet to be restored and are covered in 20 years worth of dust,
02:22which isn't as bad as it sounds.
02:23The fact of the matter is the dust is what ended up preventing the paint from being ruined
02:28so when we start washing these off and cleaning them with the special solution, the paint
02:33on almost all of them is in perfect condition so that was a pleasant surprise when we started
02:38working on the first couple of cars.
02:40When the restoration is complete, how much would the collection be worth?
02:44It's a very very valuable collection, they're folklore, people know about the cars so it's
02:48very hard to put a dollar amount on the cars because who knows what the value of Peter
02:52Max and VH1 having these cars but they're worth a lot.
02:56So what does the future hold for these 36 Corvettes?
03:00We're being approached by people from all over the world who are interested in potentially
03:04buying it or have other creative ideas for the collection so our original plan was to
03:08take all of them, get them into working condition and then go to the big auction houses but
03:13right now we're pretty much keeping our options open.
03:18For more information visit www.plastics-car.com