Daily Slideshow: Rare 1971 Stingray Uncovered From Years of Despair
The owner of this 1971 LS6 Stingray remembers racing his small-block Corvette against the 425-horsepower 454 big-block as a teen.
Hoosiers
They say you can't go home again. Home for Kris Smith is northern Indiana, but more than that it's behind the wheel of a Corvette, specifically behind the wheel of a C3 Stingray. In his high school years—Smith graduated in 1976—he spent many an hour in the driver's seat of his '69 Corvette. That '69 came from Chevrolet with a 350 hp L46 350 ci small-block, but boys will be boys and Smith ended up blowing up the L46—which as we all know is the perfect excuse for an upgrade, and his came in the form of an LT-1 engine swap.
That north Indiana town was also home to another rambunctious kid with a Corvette, only that Corvette, a '71 owned by Smith's classmate Harry, was packing extra cubes—454 of them. The friends say that back in those days they didn't know an LS6 from Adam but they wanted to see how the cars would fare pitted against each other, so as Smith told Hot Rod, "Somewhere around 1976 he and I actually took off down the main street of our little town to race, just ’cause everybody sitting there wanted us to." The '71's cubes won the day, but what Smith remembers most was the almighty tone the cars emitted. A duo of 'Vettes running down a town's main street is the kind of thunder that sets off car alarms two blocks over, and Smith swears he thought they'd blow some windows out.
Time Machine
You never forget losing a race to a loud big-block 'Vette as a teen, and Smith said he would hear people in the town talk of the '71 through the years. The word was that it was living on Harry's parents' farm, in a barn, but that no one had seen it in a while. Smith took a trip past the farm and there it was, sitting right out there in the open, very out in the open, in the front yard of Harry's folks' place. The car looked just as it did when Smith ran against it, it still had those loud as all-get-out chrome Hooker side pipes and it still had the white accents painted on top of the original Mille Miglia red paint that he remembered as being Baldwin-Motion-like.
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A Time for Everything
Smith looked his old pal Harry up that very night and inquired after the Stingray. It was sad news, "He said his parents had died and he actually thought about renting a backhoe and burying it in the back of the barn," Smith related. The time clearly wasn't right, so Smith didn't try to coax a sale out of his old high school friend, though the contact served to reunite the buddies and they stayed in contact.
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Shelter
A bit later, circa Thanksgiving 2005, Smith saw that the '71 was still sitting out in the front yard, out in the elements, so he rang Harry up and offered some space in his barn to store the Corvette, for free, just to keep its condition from worsening. Harry took him up on it and the two continued to stay in touch.
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A Time to Change Hands
About three and a half years later, in 2008, Harry reached out to Smith and asked if Smith still wanted the '71. First of all, yes he did. Second, he knew it wasn't an easy decision for Harry so he didn't make him wait for an answer, Smith met him that night to pay Harry for the big-block 'Vette.
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The Big One
Now, 30 years after he ran against the '71, Smith, has turned into something of a Corvette collector, was in for a surprise. When he went to retrieve the car from the farm, he got a good look at the 425 hp console plaque. That's right, it was an LS6, one of 188 built for 1971, as compared with the 4,473 390 hp 454-powered LS5s produced that year.
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A Time to Rebuild
Though the car, as you can see from these pictures, is in desperate need of restoration, the good news is it's more than worthy of one—right down to the numbers matching 454. The car still wears the functional hood scoop it had when Harry drove it, ditto for the ET mags and metal fender flares. Timing is everything and after just recently finishing a not-inexpensive restoration of a black 1965 Corvette, and with two kids in college, the LS6 will have to wait a bit before it's returned to its 1971, or its Day 2 '70s, street-racing glory. But when it does, fully recovered not just uncovered, we hope to proudly report the news here in Corvette Forum.
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