The Corvette Hunter. Tyler Greenblatt
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world, that no one had seen before? How could he leave his mark while taking his business to a whole new level that he had only dreamed of? Unforeseen as the great idea his father had urged him to deliver, Kevin began taking the restored rolling chassis to local shows. It garnered plenty of interest, as most people are only used to seeing the finished product of a restoration, even though “85 percent of the workmanship is underneath the car.”
“I did that a couple of times, but I got tired of pushing that damn thing around. I wondered how much more I really had to do on it to make it driveable. Put a seat in it, put a master cylinder in it, some wiring, bumpers? That’s exactly what we’ll do, we’ll make a driveable chassis.”
A local Chevrolet dealership car show would be the place to gauge reactions to a driveable-chassis Corvette. Loving to give fellow car enthusiasts and spectators a show, Kevin unloaded the driveable chassis, which wasn’t street legal, a block away from the dealership and proceeded to drive it at 40 mph back and forth past the show.
“The entire crowd left the show and watched me drive this creation up and down the highway for about eight or nine minutes. Then I finally drove into the show and the crowd was around that thing the whole time. I thought, ‘You know, I think I got something here.’ People were blown away. Not only was the craftsmanship excellent, everything was functional and driveable. So now we had something.”
Kevin Mackay and his Corvette Repair shop was instantly on the map. They brought the driveable chassis to all the national shows, making it one of the most photographed cars in the 1980s. He continued to promote it, and fans continued to go crazy for it. “They heard about it, they read about it, they saw it. It’s a win-win situation for all,” he says. “It’s good for me as the owner of the car, it’s good for my business because of the exposure, and people get an education seeing the inner workings of a Corvette.
“My competitors didn’t know where I came from. When I brought this thing to the national level, I brought it out exposed. It’s like having a girl take her clothes off and walk down the beach. Everyone’s going to look. If she had her clothes on, eh, they’d probably look at her if she’s a cutie. Imagine being a cutie with no clothes on; you’re going to get a lot more looks.
“I was really exposed with this chassis, so I had to make sure that whoever looked at this thing, I had to make a lasting impression on them, whether it was a potential customer or a guy wanting to learn what went where and how things mounted. But I really got off when I saw well-known restorers taking notes and taking photographs. I knew we had something there and I knew I had to take every creation to another level.
“I want to be the guy who pushes the envelope at all times. I thrive on the challenge, and I thrive on the competition. I’m a very bad sore loser. If I go there, I go there to win. I want to make sure that I’m very proud of what my staff and I have done and achieved. So I always push the envelope, and it’s fun. To this day I haven’t lost my drive. After 33 years, I still love doing it.”
NCRS Top Flight Award
With Bounty Hunter finally put together again as a complete car, none other than Ed Mueller purchased it in 1991 for the record sale price of $100,000. The Corvette Repair team campaigned it for him, showing it in the Bloomington Gold Special Collection, Chip’s Choice at Corvettes at Carlisle, and the Malcolm Konner Chevrolet Show. It took home a Bloomington Gold Award and an NCRS Top Flight Award.
The NCRS Top Flight Award proved to be somewhat of an undertaking by Kevin when he took the car to the regional meet in Cypress Gardens, Florida. Bounty Hunter was all done up in its special trim with the decals and the Cragar mag wheels. Kevin had the black and white photos of the car sitting in the showroom like that, and that’s the way he felt he should restore the car. The Corvette’s story was bigger than the car itself.
A couple of NCRS judges approached Kevin and the car on judging day and asked him what he wanted to do with the car. He responded that he wanted it judged for Flight. The judges were shocked. “You can’t do that!” they said. “Look at the decals and the wheels.”
“I understand it has the decals on the fenders and aftermarket wheels, but they’re part of the car’s story,” Kevin responded.
“It’s an insult to the NCRS!” the judges decried. “We can’t judge this car.”
Kevin was beginning to get annoyed at this point. He knew that the wheels and the decals would only lose him a few points on the otherwise pristine restoration that the Corvette Repair team had done. “Look,” he said, “I’m a paying NCRS member, and I have all the documentation on the car and everything required for flight judging.”
And so the judges went through the car and gave it near perfect points for the interior, chassis, and engine. When it came to the paint, they awarded no points. Kevin argued that every other panel on the car, the hood, roof, rear deck, quarter panels, everything else was perfect and that the decals were only on the fenders. The judges stood their ground and the car received zero points for paint, as well as a loss of points on the wheels, which Kevin had assumed.
That night at the awards banquet, Kevin was still fuming about the judging fiasco earlier. Many of his customers were in attendance, and it would hurt his reputation to enter a car and not win Top Flight. The judge who had given Kevin grief earlier that day went to the podium to announce the event’s Top Flight winners. Sure enough, Kevin’s name was called! Even with earning zero points on the paint, the rest of the car carried it over the 94-point threshold for Top Flight awards.
“They can only take off so many points for paint, and since everything else was perfect, the car still qualified!” Kevin says. “I threatened to paint flames on the car and bring it back the next year!”
“The car made such an impact in the hobby at the time that it was invited to go to the National Corvette Museum Annex,” Kevin says. “We brought that car down with the ’67 L88 Le Mans racer that Ed Mueller owned to show in the Annex, before the museum was built, to promote the future museum. They just wanted that thing down there, which was really cool. I was getting some really great PR with that car.”
The only thing missing from the way Vernon Turner had the car set up is the CB radio. The 435 hp Bounty Hunter looks ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. The “1967” license plate is a must for the non-Corvette people in the crowd, as any Corvette fan can tell a real ’67 from the center-mount reverse lights and the five-slot side vents behind the front wheel. (Photo Courtesy Bill Erdman)
Into the Future
Bounty Hunter is one of the small handful of Corvettes that Kevin had originally hoped never to sell, but he had to put his business first. The $100,000 sale to Ed Mueller didn’t go toward buying new equipment or another special car, it went toward the actual purchase of Corvette Repair in the form of buying out his partner, whom Kevin was eager to remove.
“We sat down like gentlemen and negotiated a deal where I would buy him out of the business,” he remembers. “To do that, I had to come up with some quick cash and, although it broke my heart to sell the car, I had no choice to get him out of the business. Bounty Hunter will always hold a place in my heart.”
After Ed Mueller’s ownership, Bounty Hunter went to another client of Kevin’s, Frank Perulli, and then another, James Korn, and another, Brian Skelton. The waiting list for the car continued to grow even after other black/red 435-hp coupes turned up. Everyone still wanted Bounty Hunter.
Recently, the car came up for sale at Mecum, appearing in its factory trim with “Bounty Hunter” decal and mag wheels removed. The car failed to sell after reaching the $350,000 mark; the owner was looking for more than $400,000.
“They took the history away,” Kevin feels. “That, to me, made the car really neat. God knows where the wheels are; it took me a while to find the correct wheels.”
Don’t give up hope just yet of ever seeing Bounty Hunter take center stage