Cob Vette News
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COB VETTE NEWS ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Volume, 35 Issue 1 January 2016 Notes from the President What’s Happening This Month Thank you to Karen and Lowell Rothenberger for chairing our annual Christmas January 9th Meeting 7:00 pm Brunch. The Columns Banquet Facility was a great venue, the food was awesome, and we had record attendance of 100 members and guests. I would also like to thank the membership for their generosity in donating Toys for Tots. It was also nice to see a few Corvettes in the parking lot. Maybe next year I won't be so anxious to put my car in storage. Looking ahead to 2016 several members have expressed a desire to participate in a few out of town trips. For instance: Bloomington Gold, June 23-25, Indianapolis, IN; NCCC Convention, July 17-22, Omaha, NE; Mecum Auction, July 21-23, Harrisburg, PA; Vettes at the Beach, July 30-31, Syracuse, NY and of course Corvettes of Carlisle, August 25-28, Carlisle, PA. So mark your new calendars for some of these events. Of course planning is in the early stages for our annual car show at Salvatore's chaired by John Biggie. The 12th Annual Corvette Caravan is looking for new chairpersons but Skip and Pete have volunteered to help out a new team. Of course we all look forward to our late winter Club Anniversary Dinner ( aka Installation Dinner), chaired by Bob Kaczmarek, our winter pizza and wings party, ice cream socials, big summer picnic, along with local cruises and car shows around OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF Western NY. If you have any ideas for some new event or activity you feel the members would enjoy, please bring it to the attention of Lynda Graham our Activity Chairperson. Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year! Save the Wave! www.corvettesofbuffalo.com Frank CORVETTES of BUFFALO 1 Officers President -------- -- Frank Pastore --------- 716 - 694 - 9024 Vice President ---Wayne Scudder--------- 716-692-8178 Treasurer ---------Marianne Pastore ----- 716-694-9024 Secretary ----------John Biggie ------------- 585-492-2927 January Anniversary’s st Board of Directors 1 David & Carol Hall Sue Brownlee 716-693-4654 Dick Brownlee 716-693-4654 Mike Buccilli 716-648-2037 Bruce Graham 716-741-3350 Jim Kelly 716-681-7931 Skip Polowy 716-201-1889 Rich Zahner 716-225-1188 Committees Membership Barbara Lipome 716-691-8845 Newsletter Dennis Buckley 716-759-2972 Phone Comm. Lynda Graham 716-741-3350 Sunshine Comm. Karen Rothenberger 716-675-9467 Or Diane Skeide 716-876-1197 Webmaster Jim Bonus 716-695-7643 Activities Dir. Lynda Graham 716-741-3350 Club Photographer Dan Krakowski 716-675-5880 Liaison for Out of Town Corvette Clubs Mike & Lee Buccilli 716-648-2037 January Birthday’s Meeting every second Saturday of the month at First Presbyterian Church 6th Mike Buccilli 9675 Main St. Clarence, NY, 14031 7th Bonnie Binger Meeting starts 7:00 p.m. 7th Lorry Kwiek 10th Linda Graham Corvettes of Buffalo is open to all Corvette owners and 16th Nicolet Brett enthusiasts over the age of 21 19th John Haller Visit us at http://www.corvettesofbuffalo.com/ 19th Nancy Conroy Send Newsletter Articles To: 22nd Juan Phillips Dennis Buckley th E-Mail : [email protected] 29 Matt Behr th 31st Patti Parrish Submissions must be in by the 26 Late submissions will be published the following month. 2 CORVETTES of BUFFALO (Article is reprinted with the permission of: ( National Corvette Museum e-NEWS @ http://corvettemuseum.org ). Greetings of Holiday Cheer from your friends at the National Corvette Museum! T’was the night before Christmas and in the garage. Santa stared at his calendar, it was no mirage. "The 24th of December, it got here so quick. I need to be going soon, lickity split!" "It’s 80 degrees so the sleigh just won’t do. Let’s start up the Vette and the GPS, too." So he fires up the engine, gives the reindeer the night off, and peels out of the driveway faster than saying Hasselhoff. "First let's make a pit stop at Zora’s place, to check out his rides and challenge him to a Motorsports Park race." The guys had fun racing, trading Vette stories and tips, “But I must be going,” Santa said, “Christmas is coming quick.” And as he departed, you could hear Zora shout, “Burn rubber, my friend, and spread Corvettes about!” Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays! 3 CORVETTES of BUFFALO Corvette Cloth Seats – More (or less) than meets the eye The 2015 Corvette has a variety of configurations – engine/transmission, performance exhaust, sound system upgrades, and much more, but classic Corvette restoration projects have a variation that you won’t see any longer in modern Corvette culture. Some might consider that a blessing in disguise, but to purists, especially where interior authenticity is sought after, it cannot be overlooked. No, we’re not talking about dashboards, or lighting systems, but rather Cloth seats. Whether you realize it or not, cloth seats were in fact an option ‘once upon a time’, so there is no mistaking the fact that Corvette restoration projects can, and sometimes do include restoring to factory specs, where some might not consider the factory specifications to be truly “Corvette worthy”. To the new enthusiast or a brand new Corvette owner, the idea of cloth might seem like a step down or backwards in the styling they seek, but cloth seating as original components have been around for almost as long as the original Corvette itself. First introduced in in 1977, factory cloth seats were considered a good baseline model for which, yes, leather would certainly be considered an upgrade, but when restoring a Corvette to its original configuration, a cloth C3 configuration is incredibly valuable. Original cloth seat covers were actually leather seats with cloth inserts, which came in 6 optional colors. From 1978-80, Corvette seats were still being made with cloth inserts, but color options were decreased. Towards the end of the C3 era, the seats were made entirely out of cloth, again, having as many as 6 different colors to choose from – charcoal, medium red, camel, dark blue, silver and finally, medium cinnabar. Following the end of the C3 era, the C4 Corvettes held on to the tradition of having cloth seats as a baseline, standard option, with leather seats being an upgrade. Of course, many Corvette owners, then and now, consider the idea of cloth as less than desirable, but this had a more positive impact on the Corvette’s value with a cloth configuration than could have been foreseen in the early 1980s. Primarily, the standard was to opt for the more expensive leather seats, this meant less numbers of original Corvettes with cloth seats, thereby increasing the rarity of those configurations and subsequently, increasing both their intrinsic and historical values. Take for example, the 1990 C4 Corvette, there were only 540 original cloth seat configurations made for that model year, compared with the overall 26,412 models made in production that year. That represents a little over 2% of the entire model run for 1990. 4 CORVETTES of BUFFALO The reasoning behind including cloth seats at the time made sense to many shoppers, it lowered the entry price during a time when gas prices were making owning a high performance vehicle less palatable for some, plus there was much discussion about the heat from the vinyl leather seats, and sliding around on the leather seats, which was not a problem with cloth seating. All arguments, pro and con, regarding cloth seating seemed to fade in the face of both a lack of interest and need and finally the cloth seating standard was removed finally from the Corvette line in 1994. Since cloth seats have been completely absent from the Corvette lexicon for over 20 years now, it makes the original restoration of these classics even more important and valuable today. Depending on what you have for your C3/C4 restoration project, you may see a cloth seat restoration as beneath you, but in reality, the scarcity of these models makes them even more potentially valuable, not less. We like leather seats in Corvettes as much as the next enthusiast, but in the end, what makes a restoration project special isn’t necessarily just what we want to do with it, but rather keeping the project true to the original time period, the configurations of that era and finally to the Corvette brand itself. Whichever way you choose cloth seats in Corvettes were around for a fairly significant period of time and we can’t look forward without paying our respects to our past. DB January Trivia Questions 1. What was changed to raise the 1954 Corvette to 155 HP? 2. Who was the male star of the movie “The Man of La Mancha”? 3. Why was the “V” in the “Chevrolet” fender script enlarged on the 1955 Corvette? 4. What was the first sequel to “The Pink Panther” called? 5. What was the last year for cotton ply tires on the Corvette? (Answers on page 10) 5 CORVETTES of BUFFALO Reprinted from: http://www.boldride.com George Kennedy November 24, 2015 Pontiac Banshee: Killed by the Corvette Before he founded the company that would bear his name and created the car that would become an iconic part of cinema, John DeLorean was a madman in a lab at Pontiac. He was responsible for the Pontiac GTO, and wanted to continue furthering the brand’s performance stature. He had his sights set on an incredible car called the Banshee. Too bad General Motors can be a hot mess at times.