1972 Corvette Stingray

It’s a pretty long way from hotting up mum’s FJ Holden as a 15-year-old to becoming the proud owner of this spectacular 1972 Corvette Stingray, but it’s not a hard history to trace for classic car enthusiast John Forster.

Sitting at his kitchen table as John outlines his automotive history proves a fascinating trip in time with a bloke whose passion for cars is clear from the get-go.

“Its been a lifelong thing for me,” John explained. “Mum had an FJ Holden and Dad was a mechanic. I used to tinker with that and when I was old enough to get my first job, after finishing school at 15, I started buying parts for the FJ.”

That job was, unsurprisingly, as an apprentice mechanic with a well-known dealership for the time – around 1976 – Laylor Motors at Chardons Corner in south Brisbane.

“I added things like wide wheels, a twin carbie . . . little things that meant nothing to Mum, and Dad reckoned I was wasting my money, but it looked good,” John, a Moorooka boy born and raised, said.

“After I had the job I got a loan for $1500 to buy an HG station wagon. Mum went guarantor – it was a lot of money in the 1970s – and I did it up over many years.

“And as time went on, more cars came along.”

They sure did. John reeled off an enviable list of cars he’s called his own over the years including an HK Holden Brougham, a 1966 pillarless Chev Impala, a VC Commodore Peter Brock Special, an HJ GTS Monaro, a number of Datsun 1200 utes and a host of ‘domestic’ cars that were more daily drivers than something special.

As you’d imagine for someone with a strong background in the trade, John’s always done most of the work on his cars himself and, for someone who says he’s ‘been tarred with the GM brush’, his eventual acquisition of the Stingray was definitely not out of the blue.

John stayed in the motor trade until the mid-1990s when he made a career change, moving into the laundry equipment business but, naturally, his enthusiasm for cars lived on. In fact, when he left his role as the general manager of an air conditioning firm in 2012, he turned to his car at the time, a 1970 VW Type 3.

Around the same time his daughter wanted to get into the car scene, so the pair went halves in a 1973 Beetle and ‘I’ve still got half shares in it,’ said John.

But in 2017 something new beckoned and, after six months of research, John was on the lookout for a Stingray.

But not just any Stingray. John had a few ‘musts’ on his list, including left-hand drive.

“I wanted a left-hand drive because that’s how they came out. I wanted the authentic experience of the car,” he said.

Tying into that desire was another on the list – auto transmission.

“I figured driving on the other side of the car would be enough of a challenge so an auto would be nice and easy.”

And he wanted a Stingray from the 1971-72 period. “I always loved that Coke bottle shape – plus the ‘72 was the last of the cars with a steel bumper. In 1973 they went to a plastic nose,” said John. “I had my heart set on a red one with a black interior too.”

As it turned out, he ticked all those boxes except the last.

The Stingray John now proudly calls his own popped up in a saved search for an online marketplace on a Sunday night. He called a mate who he rightly thought would be familiar with the car and by the Wednesday John was having a look at it.

“I went and had a look, fell in love, and the negotiations began,” he said. “It all happened pretty quickly. My wife Robyn was away at the time and when she got home, I was out . . . we were talking on the phone and I told her I’d moved some furniture around and a few other things, so would she go downstairs and see if she was happy.

“I could hear her walk down, pause and then said ‘holy crap, where’d that come from!’.”

Happily, she ‘has always enjoyed’ the car, said John.

“She wasn’t really into the VW scene but she loves going for a cruise in the Stingray.”

The car has the standard ZQ3 350 V8 and Turbo 400 three-speed auto gearbox but sports the domed hood that actually came on Stingrays with the LT-1 engine – a small block V8 also of 350 cu in but that puts out 370hp as opposed to the ZQ3’s 300hp.

So, what happened to the idea of a red Stingray?

“The colour won me over soon as I saw it. I thought, yeah, you’re coming home with me,” said John.

“It had been recently painted, which can be a good or bad thing, and there are a few issues with the paint, but you’d need an eye for details. It’s a ‘one-metre car’ – get closer and you might see a few issues.”

That isn’t something John’s losing any sleep over.

“I bought this car to drive. I don’t consider it a show car, we get out and we use it,” he said.

“I also didn’t want something I’d have to spend a lot of time working on.

“It’s a million-dollar feeling when you drive that car – its just so much fun. You feel like you’re in the Batmobile with those big flared wheel arches.

“First time out, we went to Redcliffe for lunch and there were people on the highway hanging out of their cars taking photos. On the way back someone was hanging out of their car with an iPad filming us! It’s a good-looking car and you don’t see one every day.”
John’s also hooked on the Stingray’s technology which, for its time, was pretty advanced and even today is impressive, not to mention, well, cool.

“There’s so much technology put into the car. I wonder how people came up with idea of some of the workings,” said John.

“How the pop-up headlights work via pneumatics for example, or the windscreen wipers.

You can’t see the wipers, just like you can’t see the lights – the whole car is so smooth looking.

“To get the wipers to work, once you flick the switch, there’s a panel in front of windscreen that pops up and goes forward to let the wipers come out to do their thing. When its done, they come back to a park position and then the panel closes again. How did they dream that up?”

While he doesn’t have a complete history, John knows his car came off Chevrolet’s St Louis, Missouri assembly line in 1972 and was originally painted Targa Blue, which its current colour all but matches.

It arrived in Australia in August 2007, but he’s doesn’t know much about what happened next until he bought it from a fellow motoring enthusiast in Cleveland.

“I had looked at importing one from the U.S. but there’s a lot of costs involved with that,” said John. “From all my research, I am happy I bought well.”
Money aside, it’s clear that this Stingray is doing for John what any classic should do for its owner – bringing a lot of joy and fun into their lives.

Source: Motor Trader E-Magazine (June 2019 Edition)

7 Jun 2019