Kevin and his team at Corvette Repair restored the 1967 big-block coupe to the way Vernon Turner owned it with the Bounty Hunter decals on the fenders and the Cragar GT aluminum mag wheels. In this condition, the car scored an NCRS Top Flight award, even with maximum points taken off for paint and aftermarket wheels. The car looks mean with the red stinger, red interior, and redline tires! (Photo Courtesy Bill Erdman)

      After six months, Turner sold the car. He was killed just a short time later in what is believed to be a mob hit. It has been alleged that the car was also used to run drugs and guns across state lines and shows up in several FBI stakeout videos and images.

      The Bounty Hunter Corvette then went through 17 different owners and saw much of the typical 1970s and 1980s customization on its journey. It had fender flares grafted on, Motion Performance did some work on the car, and at one point it was even painted green with purple snakes all over it. It was fish-scale brown at another point in its life and had a variety of different wheels. By the early 1980s, it was typical Corvette red but retained its diamond-tufted interior, likely from its purple snake days. Like so many great cars during that time, its rare showroom form and interesting history had been left long behind.

      The Find

      In March 1988, Kevin received a call from Alan Kaplan saying that he had a line on a factory black big-block coupe with red interior. He said that he’d turn Kevin on to the car, and Kevin would pay him a $500 broker fee if he bought it. That was a fair tradeoff, and Kaplan told Kevin about an ad in Vette Vues magazine for the car, which was owned by Terry Golden.

      Kevin went to see the car and ascertain its original setup because the car had by then been painted, customized, and was running headers and mag wheels. He opened the gas cap, removed the rubber boot, and shined his flashlight into the tank itself to read the original tank sticker, which was still glued in place. The car checked all the boxes: Tuxedo Black paint, red vinyl trim, 435 Turbo-Jet engine, 4:11 rear end, factory sidepipes, power steering, power brakes, power windows, and redline tires.

      At the time, Kevin had never heard of another black/red 435 coupe. In fact, this car was the only known, documented one in existence. “The car had amazing options,” he says. “The codes were very important to me, and black happens to be my favorite color. Knowing that black is the rarest color for that year (they only made 815 black cars), how many are 435s? How many have all the special options?”

      With the goal of buying and restoring an extra-special car to the highest possible caliber, Kevin had been saving every cent he made, waiting for the right opportunity to come along. “A black and red 435 coupe with sidepipes; you can’t get much better than that,” he says. “So I purchased the car for $19,600 and couldn’t get the money out fast enough!”

      While undertaking the initial restoration, which saw the body and chassis restored separately, Kevin hired private investigator David Reisner to track down the history of the unique car. “Somebody had to order this car special because of all these options,” he points out. “You don’t get all these options on a 435 car, especially power steering and all the goodies on it.”

      Reisner traced the car back through 17 owners, with the original dealership already being known due to the dealer zone number on the gas tank sticker. Reisner even found a few old black and white photographs of the car on the dealership floor in its Bounty Hunter trim.

      “We gotta restore the car just the way it is on the showroom floor,” Kevin says. “What a great piece of history!”

      Life As a Driveable Chassis

      The Corvette Repair crew did an initial body-on restoration of Bounty Hunter, which included the removal of the fender flares and the addition of a complete New Old Stock (NOS) GM nose. Kevin brought it out for its first public appearance at the 1988 National Corvette Restorers Society (NCRS) National Convention. The event had a drag racing portion held at Maple Grove Raceway, and because the car started life as a drag racer, it made the perfect setting for its launch into the limelight.

      Kevin’s longtime friend, customer, and mentor Ed Mueller showed up with Grand Sport #2, which he had just purchased for $800,000. Kevin estimates that car’s value at nearly $10 million today. “So I’m seeing all these cars racing down the dragstrip, and I wanted to take this car and race against the Grand Sport,” Kevin says. “I was egging Ed on: ‘Let’s see that ****box Grand Sport you just purchased; let’s go drag race!’ He said, ‘Kevin, I don’t want to embarrass you; this car’s got half the weight, but if you want to race, you’re on!’

      The Bounty Hunter Corvette has no clothes! While it may not look like much to most people, the Tri-Power air cleaner and sidepipes hint that this car is something special. Take note of the valve cover signed by Zora Arkus-Duntov as well as “Zora” written on the frame by Kevin’s knee.

       You didn’t think the drivable chassis was just for show, did you? Here’s Kevin ripping down the street by Corvette Repair. One can only imagine the incredible sound emanating from those sidepipes!

      “So we go down the dragstrip and what does he do? He blows right by me, I hit a patch of antifreeze, and I punch the car right into the guardrail. The car starts smoking in the front; people thought it was on fire. I was so embarrassed that I crashed the car going in a straight line that I had my head down against the steering wheel. We just put this brand-new GM NOS nose on the car that cost me a small fortune. People were yelling, ‘Get out of the car!’ I said, ‘I’m not getting out of the car, I’m too embarrassed. I can’t believe I crashed this damn car.’

      “Eventually they had to pull me out because they thought it was on fire. What happened was, when I hit the guardrail, the lower hose fell off the car and all this hot steam’s coming out of it. People thought it was actual smoke from a fire.”

      Kevin was bestowed a special award that year for crashing the car, since the Bounty Hunter versus Grand Sport race had drawn a massive crowd of spectators. As Kevin likes to remember it: “I crashed it going against one of the greatest Corvettes in history.”

      Because the car needed a major rebuild after the accident, the Corvette Repair crew this time separated the body from the chassis and initiated a total, painstaking restoration on each component individually.

      Kevin’s father, who worked for the New York Times for 32 years, told him early on in his business, “Kevin, you gotta come up with

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