It has been many years, but there was a time when a basket case C1 Corvette wasn’t all that hard to come across and a rare example really wasn’t that expensive if a person knew how to identify what they were looking at. Take, for example, Rick Hendrick’s ’57 Airbox Corvette, which at one point in its history the Polo White beauty sold as a parts car for $50.
Beyond telling us the low resale price, there wasn’t a whole lot more the curator of the Hendrick Heritage Collection could reveal about Rick Hendrick’s Airbox Corvette. You see, we’re talking about Rick Hendrick the NASCAR team owner and founder of the Hendrick Automotive Group, a consortium of almost 100 dealerships. To help research this feature it was explained to Vette there’s a law automobile dealers can’t reveal the names of a car’s previous owners.
Hendrick’s curator could tell us the ’57 had 17 previous owners, the VIN number and where it was sold new and that was enough information to dive into a rabbit hole. The first burrow was a search for Aloha Motors, and lo and behold Aloha Motors was a Chevrolet dealership in Honolulu, Hawaii. It was mention of an unusual architectural feature about Aloha Motors that snagged Google’s web crawling bots. In the photos, Aloha Motors’ steel parking structure was four stories high with brand-new 1962 Chevy pickups and cars stacked and retrieved like records from a 20-selection Rock-Ola jukebox.
And then like it was just waiting there for us to discover, we found a guy who posted in the comments section that he was looking for information on his ’57 Corvette from Hawaii. And even better he posted his phone number, so we gave him a call. Not only did he have a ’57 Corvette bought new at Aloha Motors it was an Airbox car and he had flown over a half-dozen times to Hawaii to gather further documentation. We compared VIN numbers, and he told how the state of Hawaii had the sales records dating back to the sale of his ’57 Corvette, but gaining access to view the records was impossible … more privacy issues.
It was an interesting conversation, bear in mind Hawaii wasn’t to become a state for two more years, Elvis Presley made his first visit to Hawaii in 1957 and Henry J. Kaiser had just completed the Ocean Tower at his Hawaiian Village resort, these were affluent times in Hawaii—affluent enough that Aloha Motors had sold at least two Airbox Corvettes. Learning the fate of the Aloha Motors’ Airbox Corvettes once they had rolled off the showroom floor was easier; they’d been drag cars running the quarter-mile at Kahuka Raceway Park.
The Chevrolet engineers’ intention for the Airbox design was to supply fresh air for the 283-horse fuel-injected 283-inch engine, and cool the brakes on a Corvette road racer running at Sebring, Daytona and such. The Airbox option with all of its required RPO extras didn’t exactly lend itself to drag racing, the parts needed to make the car run the quarter-mile faster were removed for lightening. The metallic brakes found standard on an Airbox were really a dumb idea for a drag racer. The square metallic pucks mounted in a row on conventional brake shoes had to be heated up with repeated hard stops in order to work properly. Leaving the starting line with cold metallic brakes fitted with air scoops and finned drums wasn’t the hot ticket to shut it down.
The farthest back in time we could trace the history for this car was to 2007 when the owner that bought it from Ray Masciarella II took it to Dick Robinson to correct a few minor issues and repair prior major bodywork. Dick Robinson, now retired from restoring Corvettes, is considered to be a leading authority on Airbox Corvettes and has restored seven. We spoke with Dick about this car and he said when it arrived he discovered the fiberglass repair on the front clip wasn’t good. This car had been hit hard and repaired poorly. The best way to properly restore it was by grafting a front clip taken from an Airbox car wrecked while racing in the 1970s.
We asked Dick if VIN number E57S105116 was a real Airbox car meaning did it leave the factory as one of the 43 produced in 1957. Dick explained without documentation going back to day one when the car was purchased new there’s no positive way to say yes. And added that all of the parts the factory used to build an Airbox Corvette were available over the counter at Chevrolet dealerships. Dick said, and we confirmed it by consulting the Registry of Corvette Racecars it wasn’t unusual for Corvette racers in 1957 to upgrade a car with dealer-installed parts. That said, Dick stated that everything he found about Rick Hendrick’s Airbox was consistent with a factory built car.
The minor items Dick Robinson corrected before Hendrick bought the car in 2012 at Mecum Auctions Indy auction was replacing incorrect profile BFGoodrich tires with Coker’s exact reproduction 670×15 Firestone tires and mentioned, “Firestone was the performance tire of the 1957 era, and the most appropriate brand for this car.” Additionally, Robinson found the original door and kick panels were in place, and advised against replacing “since the Al Knoch reproductions are not accurate.” In contrast, Robinson installed Al Knoch carpet and trim tabs, stating they were “correct.”
“The 410 and 411 RPO 684 shocks were delivered from the rebuilder.” It cost $2,000 to install one new old stock RPO 684 shock absorber and rebuild the three RPO 684 shock absorbers that were on the car.
What’s in a name? It’s not hard to find a Corvette series built for competition with a more successful racing history than an Airbox. The external air intakes—rear brake scoops on the ’56 Corvette race cars were more effective, and the separation of brake cooling ducts and engine cold-air intakes on Corvettes from 1958 and later worked better, so who knows why the Airbox cars have become the holy grail fetching astronomical prices. It could be Airbox is just a cool name to go along with a really interesting series of early Corvette race cars. Vette
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