Bringing home the Barn Find

When I won the 1970 big block car in Mr. Ed's Auction, I had to find a way to get the car from Catoosa OK to New Braunfels, TX. I made arrangements with an auto-transport company I found on the web by the name of Shiplux. They advertised themselves as shippers for DuPont registry vehicles, so I figured they must be legit. Boy was I wrong. If you have never used an auto transport company, there are some things you need to know. First of all, most of them are brokers. They act as the middle-man and sub-contract your job to a third party transport company. Second of all, they are used to transporting cars that run and can drive onto the transport. In my case, I had a car that was not running, had three flat tires, and also had several pieces to go with it: two boxes of parts, the original exhaust pipes and mufflers, and the spare, aftermarket big block hood. I explained to Shiplux that the car was not running and they assured me it would not be a problem.

I flew into Tulsa, OK, and drove a rental car to Catoosa the day before the car was to be picked up so I could get my first look at my purchase and be there the next day when it was loaded. I drove to Mr. Ed's and met with Michelle, who had been a wonderful contact with the auction company throughout the experience of bidding on the car. I took some pictures of the car in its barn-find state and was excited to see how good of condition it was really in. Other than the dust, the paint seemed in good shape and the interior looked brand new.

I began to get nervous when I hadn't heard from the shipper that afternoon, finalizing for the next day, so I called Shiplux. To my shock, I learned the shipper had canceled! He had called Mr. Ed's directly, and learning there were extra parts and a non-running car, he canceled, saying he couldn't haul something like that. Shiplux offered to try and find another shipper. I explained that I had flown in from out of town and needed a shipper the next day. Shiplux could not get another shipper that fast so I told them I was canceling the contract and requested a refund. They declined to refund my deposit!! I called VISA and they helped me to get my deposit back when Shiplux was unable to provide service as scheduled.

Now I had to quickly come up with plan B. As luck would have it, Michelle knew the owner of the U-Haul rental agencies in Oklahoma, and she helped arrange for a car hauler, and a 29-foot truck to pull the car hauler (pickup trucks were local rent only so the only one-way vehicle to tow the corvette was a moving truck.) Michelle and her son also arranged for a friendly tow-truck to come and haul the truck from the warehouse and load it onto the car hauler for me. The only way out of the auction warehouse was for the tow-truck to load it facing forward, so it had to be unloaded facing backward on the trailer. Not ideal for the doors and hood! After some tie-downs and blankets, I was ready to get on the road to Texas. (I did look a bit like the Beverly Hillbillys hauling my load!)

It took almost 12 hours to drive the 500 miles. I stopped about every 50 miles and re-checked straps, blankets, etc. It was an adventure, to say the least. Finally made it home to New Braunfels, TX, and got her up on the lift at Hill Country Vettes where my mechanic looked over the car and pronounced it in great shape and a candidate for an NCRS top-flight restoration project. We moved it into my storage unit and I began the six-month wait until Dan Martin had some room on the schedule to begin the restoration.

Next step: Starting to clean her up.