C3 Corvette Station Wagon Fit for a Drummer

Back in the 60s

No, no, no! I didn’t even have to look past the first picture to know this is just, well, wrong! Who wants to tack a wagon on the end of their corvette? That’s sort of like turning a Ford Fusion into a pickup truck and calling it the all-new Courier. It's a dream that should never be realized. But it happened back in 1968 and it's reared its ugly head several times over the last 50 years, most recently with Callaway's Corvette Aerowagen, which has less cargo room than the 1968 station wagon but is much less offensive to the Corvette brand.

This Little Corvette Went to Market

Yes, Corvettes are impractical. Yes, they don’t have much cargo room. But they weren't made to carry your groceries from Gelson's or your lumber from Home Depot. They are two-seater sports cars designed to offer high-performance and captivate the eyes of all beholders.

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Trunk Space

Back in the early days, the C1 Corvette (1953-1962) actually came with a trunk that could be accessed via a lid. Starting in 1963, Chevy did away with the lid and created a smaller trunk space that could only be accessed via the interior of the car (like the one above). One theory behind this change in truck access is that when Chevy was designing the '63 Corvette, chief engineer Zora Arkus Duntov had enough money in the budget to design and build an independent rear suspension or a trunk, but not both. Given their desire to race the car, the choice was obvious. A luggage rack was offered as a dealer-installed option (mounted on the rear deck) to supplement the interior storage space. You may occasionally see a C2 that has one but they don't seem to be very common.

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The Luggage Rack

In 1978, when the hatchback style rear window was introduced, Corvette offered the rear-deck mounted luggage rack as part of the company's aftermarket accessory line. They increased the cargo capacity of the Corvette, but a) the rack was unstable and b) it was located outside of your car which meant that your luggage was susceptible to elements such as rain, snow, heat, and locusts.

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Chuck Miller, Father of the Corvette Station Wagon

So what was the most ridiculous solution to the cargo-impaired Corvette? Hey, let’s turn it into a wagon. A wagon? What the f—k? But some people actually thought it was a good idea and even today it’s not clear who was the first to try it. Several sources point to River Rouge, Michigan custom-car builder Chuck Miller as the rightful "Elon Musk" of the Corvette wagon era. But Chuck Miller's story begins with a drummer from Motown.

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Uriel Jones and The Funk Brothers

Uriel Jones was a professional drummer who played for Motown’s in-house studio band, The Funk Brothers. As a result, Jones spent much of his time on the road. He owned a 1968 Corvette that he loved to drive, but since he couldn’t fit his drum kit into it (hmmm, perhaps he should have taken up the flute?), he wasn’t able to take his Corvette on the road with him. He wished there was enough room in the Corvette to haul his drums. That’s where Miller came into the picture and came up with the idea of turning Jones' Corvette into a... Oh no... I have to say it again... a station wagon.

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Harry Bentley Bradley Pitches In

I couldn’t tell you why, but Jones liked the idea. They enlisted the help of famed car designer Harry Bentley Bradley, who spent four years at GM before taking a job at Mattel, where he designed a range of die-cast vehicles that came to be known as Hot Wheels. Miller and Bradley had collaborated on several custom car builds, including the 1971 Plymouth Roadrunner (pictured above) and the 1971 Cuda 440 Rapid Transit System Caravan.

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Bradley Spaces Out

As you can see from the following images shown, Bradley definitely aimed to inject some of Corvette’s style characteristics in the design of the wagon, including the curvature of the rear fender and the upward slope of the rear spoiler. These elements almost make the Corvette Wagon look like a factory-designed and produced model. In fact, some might argue that the Corvette wagon looked similar to the Chevy Vega wagon (which Miller helped to design) that was factory built. I would argue that they look nothing alike, primarily because the problematic sub-compact Vega is no Corvette – not in look, feel, or spirit.  The Vega, IMHO, could be turned into anything and nobody would bat an eyelash. But the Corvette is—I hate to use the word and it will cost me a quarter at the office—an iconic symbol of American muscle at its finest, and trying to turn it into something else is not only certifiable but feels blasphemous. No disrespect to Miller or Jones or anyone else who has tried.

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Jones Sips from the Kool-Aid

So with Jones’ blessing, Miller’s shop, Styline Customs, set to work on the Corvette, working up a clay model and plaster molds in which the fiberglass parts were “laid up” by hand. The molds enabled Miller to produce the body parts needed to make additional wagons.

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July 1972, Car and Driver Magazine

Here’s where it gets weird for me. After the project was completed, the Corvette wagon was taken to the Detroit Autorama custom-car show, where it earned a First Place award and was even featured in the July 1972 issue of Car and Driver magazine. This exposure helped Miller initiate his plan to put the wagon into production. He would offer it as a turnkey car built in his hop or as a complete kit that Corvette owners could take to the shop of their choice.

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A Kit Wagon is Born

The kit included the wagon section, a floor extension, Plexiglas windows and stainless-steel window trim. The builder had to source his own fuel tank to replace the Corvette’s factory tank, which sat high between the tail-lamp panel and interior rear bulkhead. To allow the wagon’s floor to extend all the way back, the tank had to be relocated lower, to the area where the factory spare-tire carrier normally goes.

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The Second Wagon

Miller didn’t want to make the same wagon twice so for his second sojourn into the two-seater of an American i-, er, motor-god, he made another set of body panels, but this time he modified the roof so it would fit a coupe. He brought in Ralph Eckler, who was, as Miller recollects, “already a big name in aftermarket Corvette body parts.” And was set up with the proper equipment to handle higher-volume production. “I made a deal with Ralph for him to produce the parts and supply them exclusively to me for one year. After the year was up, he could put them in his catalog and sell them to anyone else. Ralph and three or four of his guys came to my shop and made high-quality molds from the coupe that I built.”

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Eckler's Wagons

In the end, Miller built about a dozen wagons for customers and several more for himself. He also sold many kits and eventually, Eckler added the company's kits to his own product line. Because of this exclusivity, most people refer to the C3 wagons as “Eckler’s Wagons.”

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Vista Cruisers and More

Some of Miller’s later builds included a functional rear hatch, with glass that hinged upward, and revised contours to better integrate with the rear urethane bumper assembly introduced on Corvettes in 1974. He also built several wagons with side windows that curved up onto the car’s roof. “We called the cars with side windows that extended onto the roof ‘Vista Cruisers’ because they reminded us of the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagons with their glass roofs.” 

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What about Uriel Jones?

As part of the Motown Records studio band The Funk Brothers, Jones played without credit on virtually every hit during that label’s heyday in the 1960s, Jones died in 2009 at the age of 74. Although I didn’t know much about him before the writing of this article, I will now forever remember him for his drum kits and wagon kits. RIP Uriel Jones. RIP Corvette Wagon.

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