The lost Corvettes of Brooklyn
05-23-05, 12:41 PM
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The lost Corvettes of Brooklyn
There are 36 vintage Corvettes in the garage below the former Daily News printing plant in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. They�re dusty, and secure behind a chain-link fence, as if being held as evidence: one Corvette for each year they were made, starting with a pearl-white �53 convertible and ending with a red 1989 model. Some of their windows are open. Some have flat tires. A lone white �61 rests outside the fence. On its back end, someone has scrawled NO ONE LOVES THESE VETTES! in the grime.
The plant is now a condo, and its residents are wondering why the cars are taking up their spaces. �It�s a really beautiful collection,� says Drew Hauser. �But it�s hard to look at because of the general state of neglect.� The only clue as to whose they are isn�t even a Vette. It�s a yellow VW Beetle adorned with pink clouds, blue stars, and multicolored UFOs�the hippie iconography of Peter Max, the mustachioed pop artist who�s painted five presidents, had a one-man show at St. Petersburg�s Hermitage, and sold thousands of posters and prints. All of which has made him whimsically rich.
And as he tells it in his studio near Lincoln Center, the Corvette story is a rich man�s lark. �I�m not a car guy. I never drive,� he says. Nonetheless, on an impulse, he and a friend went to the 1990 auto show and saw the collection there. He decided he�d love to paint them, �Yellow to red, or green to blue.� That same friend woke him early the next morning to tell him that they�d been won in a VH1 contest by a Long Island carpenter named Dennis Amodeo. Max fell back asleep. �And I get the biggest PR dream I�ve ever had,� he says. �Suddenly I see my Peter Max Corvettes coming out onto a football field with cheerleaders on top. There are 60,000 people cheering, screaming. A guy in front of me is screaming to the guy behind me�he�s holding a frankfurter and mustard is dripping down his sleeve, I see this in my dream�he�s screaming right at me, looking through me, �It�s Peter Max�s cars, man!� �
Startled awake, Max picked up the phone, called Amodeo, and got him to come into the city with a lawyer. Max says he paid just under half a million dollars, �one third of what he asked for.� The plan was to do limited editions of the cars�but then �the dream wore off,� and, well, �I�ve been so busy.� He vows the project will still happen. The condo-board secretary, Michael Rogers, says that the original lessor of the garage was worried about lack of demand and so happily offered a large chunk to Max.
Don Sherman, an editor at Automobile magazine, who hasn�t seen the cars, thinks that Max got himself a pretty good deal; Vettes before �68 are highly sought-after. (In fact, only 300 of the �53s were ever made.) �Just the ones from �53 to �68 are probably worth a million and a half,� he says. And he dismisses the dust and scratches as �surface stuff, mostly irrelevant to a collector.�
Told of Max�s plan for them, though, he says, �From a car enthusiast�s standpoint, they�re worth more in their deteriorated condition than if they were painted by Peter Max.�
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...&postid=409831
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...threadid=37167
The plant is now a condo, and its residents are wondering why the cars are taking up their spaces. �It�s a really beautiful collection,� says Drew Hauser. �But it�s hard to look at because of the general state of neglect.� The only clue as to whose they are isn�t even a Vette. It�s a yellow VW Beetle adorned with pink clouds, blue stars, and multicolored UFOs�the hippie iconography of Peter Max, the mustachioed pop artist who�s painted five presidents, had a one-man show at St. Petersburg�s Hermitage, and sold thousands of posters and prints. All of which has made him whimsically rich.
And as he tells it in his studio near Lincoln Center, the Corvette story is a rich man�s lark. �I�m not a car guy. I never drive,� he says. Nonetheless, on an impulse, he and a friend went to the 1990 auto show and saw the collection there. He decided he�d love to paint them, �Yellow to red, or green to blue.� That same friend woke him early the next morning to tell him that they�d been won in a VH1 contest by a Long Island carpenter named Dennis Amodeo. Max fell back asleep. �And I get the biggest PR dream I�ve ever had,� he says. �Suddenly I see my Peter Max Corvettes coming out onto a football field with cheerleaders on top. There are 60,000 people cheering, screaming. A guy in front of me is screaming to the guy behind me�he�s holding a frankfurter and mustard is dripping down his sleeve, I see this in my dream�he�s screaming right at me, looking through me, �It�s Peter Max�s cars, man!� �
Startled awake, Max picked up the phone, called Amodeo, and got him to come into the city with a lawyer. Max says he paid just under half a million dollars, �one third of what he asked for.� The plan was to do limited editions of the cars�but then �the dream wore off,� and, well, �I�ve been so busy.� He vows the project will still happen. The condo-board secretary, Michael Rogers, says that the original lessor of the garage was worried about lack of demand and so happily offered a large chunk to Max.
Don Sherman, an editor at Automobile magazine, who hasn�t seen the cars, thinks that Max got himself a pretty good deal; Vettes before �68 are highly sought-after. (In fact, only 300 of the �53s were ever made.) �Just the ones from �53 to �68 are probably worth a million and a half,� he says. And he dismisses the dust and scratches as �surface stuff, mostly irrelevant to a collector.�
Told of Max�s plan for them, though, he says, �From a car enthusiast�s standpoint, they�re worth more in their deteriorated condition than if they were painted by Peter Max.�
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...&postid=409831
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...threadid=37167
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