et’s pretend you’re watching The Twilight Zone and Rod Serling says, “Imagine, if you will, in 1972, at the age of 17 you could buy a ’63 fuelie Corvette for $1,200 as your first car.” If you think that sounds like science fiction, Butch Szollosy will tell you that was science fact. Back then, C2 Corvettes could be snapped up on the cheap. While that C2 was his first ride, it was only in his possession for a short eight months—it “nickel and dimed” him to death with blown engines. As a result, it was sent to a new home and a ’69 Nova with a warmed-over 302 small-block took its place. That managed to stay with him for about two years until the urge for a Corvette returned, enticing him was a silver ’61 for sale at a local used car lot. Butch recalls, “We had an Army base in our town and the recruiter there was getting transferred so he sold the Corvette to this little used car lot. I ended up paying $1,200 for it.”

When the C1 was sold in 1974, it ended up a few towns over. In the beginning Butch stayed in contact with the new owner. “The guy didn’t know much about Corvettes so he would call me and ask me questions,” he notes. “He enjoyed the fact that I was so honest when I sold the car to him.” As time passed, he lost contact with the guy and it just became another car in a long list of cars that he owned over the years.

Things for him and the ’61 came full circle in 2012 when he drove by the owner’s house and spotted the Corvette parked in the garage buried under a pile of boxes. That stop led to the reacquisition of the car, however, it wasn’t quite the same as when it left back in 1974. Early on, the owner had castrated its performance for the sake of driveability by removing the headers, hi-rise intake and carb, generator, and 4.56:1 gears. In their place were stock manifolds, a stock intake and Quadrajet, HEI ignition, an alternator, and 3.55:1 gears, plus a new red interior and red lacquer paintjob. There is some irony in all of this. Butch claims the guy told him that he only drove it three times in 38 years and that “it drove like a buckboard” and he couldn’t understand why he even bought it back in the first place.”