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Corvette’s
50th Anniversary Celebrated at Towe Auto Museum
By
Daniel Dullum
Spectrum staff writer
When the Towe Auto Museum decided to do its part to help Chevrolet
celebrate the Corvette’s 50th anniversary, docent Bill Millard
was more than up to speed on the car’s extensive history.
Millard doesn’t just talk about vintage Corvettes, he owns one — and
it’s on display through April 30 along with four other generations of the
legendary sports car for “Corvette — Fast and Fun for 50 Years.”
“It’s a ‘54. I’ve had it for 40 years,” Millard
said. “We did most of the work on it in the 1960s. We tore everything down,
put in all new linkages and wiring and so on. It was six months in the body shop!”
Last year, it got a new engine.
“It’s what purists would call the ‘wrong car,’” he
explained. “It had a different transmission and things when I got it at
10 years old. I just replaced that wrong engine with a new wrong engine that
doesn’t leak all over the place!”
Millard drives his ‘Vette about once a month or on special occasions.
“It knows where every winery in the state of California is on autopilot,” he
quipped. “And it’ll hold three cases.”
Millard found himself hooked on Corvettes during his career overhauling radar
sets for McClellan Air Force Base and other bases over a nine-state route.
“A friend of mine on a crew had a red 1957 Corvette and we rode down to
Phoenix one time for a five-week job, and drove around Phoenix with the top down,” he
recalled. “When we got back, we saw one of these that had been totally
restored by a used car dealer. I fell in love with the ‘54 and asked a
friend where I could find one. I had one within two months. It’s been that
way ever since.”
Millard said that while there are collectors for all makes of vehicles, Corvette
enthusiasts are a different breed altogether.
“I think, as a class, Corvette people are people who just enjoy having
fun with the car,” he said. “Because the car has very little practical
function other than getting the body from point A to point B, they’re kind
of a hazard as far as being breakable, or susceptible to theft. But they’re
fun machines.”
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