|
|
| Front Cover August 2009 |
We call the home of this restored C1 “The Land of Oz” for three simple reasons.
The first one is obvious—owner Marc Osmun’s home in Fulton, New York is located a short drive north of Chittenango,
the hometown of Wizard of Oz creator L. Frank Baum.
The second is
the story that Marc told us about the ’59’s history, one that even the imagination of L. Frank Baum never dreamed
of when he wrote about yellow-brick roads. For openers, Marc says that much of the ‘59s ownership history is difficult
to trace until the time that his friend, Larry Barnes, bought it from Ronald Ajemian, owner of the Liverpool Country Club
at the time. Ron had owned it for 20 years and purchased it from David Niles Rosen in March of 1977. “I received a box
full of receipts, registrations, and restoration photos with the car that took me a while to sort
out and categorize,”
Marc says. “I traced it back to the guy who he bought it from. My best guess is that there have been four to five owners,
including myself.” Outside of the frame-off restoration that it received in 1982, its build date at St. Louis Assembly
(November 21, 1958) and its original selling dealer (Marsh Hallman Chevrolet in Albany), little else was
known about the car’s history.
The third reason
is his license plate reads “OZS 59”. “Oz” being the nickname’s of Marc and his three sons.
What was apparent,
when Larry bought it, was that this car had been well-preserved, given Central New York’s harsh
climate—and that Marc wanted it if Larry didn’t. “It wasn’t bad, but it needed a lot of cosmetic work,”
Marc recalls and adds, “I was with Larry when he bought it, and I told him, ‘I’ll tell you this. If you’re
not buying it, I’m buying it!’ At that time, Marc’s friend
had another C1 (a ’62), which he later sold—before selling the ’59 to Marc. “One day, I was catching
a ride to work from a mutual friend of ours, who said that Larry told him at dinner the night before that he was selling the
’59, because he’d been bitten by ‘The Harley Bug’. As soon as I got to work, I called Larry and said,
‘What’s this about you selling the ’59?’, and he said ‘Yeah, I’m going to buy a new Harley—I
have one all picked out, and I need the money from the Corvette.’ I told him, ‘We have a deal, you always promised
me first refusal,’ and he said, “Yeah, but you’re not going to want to pay me what I want for that car.’
I told him, ‘We’re going to negotiate— don’t you sell that car, I’ll be over after work!’
I went over, and we struck a deal, and that’s how I ended up with the car.”
What he ended up with was a Corvette that had something big going for it—an undamaged, uncut frame.
Marc says, “I saw that it had the frame-off back in ’82, and when that was done, they had the frame all sealed
and dipped, so this frame had never been welded on. It was in great shape.” Between those frame rails, however, was
not the original 230-horsepower 283. That was in a crate that came along with the car, as the ’59 had a later 350 in
it when Marc bought it. But that engine stayed in as the cosmetics were attended to. “When I bought it, I had it repainted,”
says Marc. “Another friend of mine who does body work, Fred Bidwell, gave me a good deal on it, but I had to wait three
years for him to finally get to it. I also put some tires on it, and some other things, but Larry freshened the interior up
while he had it. Since the frame of the C1 is one of the few big metal parts of the car, Larry wanted to undercoat it all
for further peace of mind.”
After Marc purchased
his new black C6 coupe (plated “OZS 06”, of course), it was time to pull the original 283 out of its crate, rebuild
it, and swap it back into the ‘59. “Now that I had the C6, and figured it would be unlikely I’d take the
’59 on many long trips, it was time to put the 283 back in,” Marc says. “I was very happy to get it when
I purchased the car, but I had it bumped it up internally to around 300 horsepower. Once I did that, I found that there’s
not a lot of difference in power from the larger 350—that 283 is an amazing, high-rpm machine with lots of torque.”
A .060-inch overbore and an L79 327-grind hydraulic cam were additions made to the 283, whose casting numbers turned up some
interesting history. The block was apparently a leftover ’58 casting that was in Flint Engine’s inventory when
the ’59 model run started, while the cylinder heads had 1960 casting codes on them.
When Marc takes the ’59 out on the roads of Central New York, it’s a pleasure to drive. “It’s not quite as good as my new C6,
but it’s not bad!” Marc says, while adding that he doesn’t ‘baby’ the now-50-year-old C1. “I
do drive it whenever I can, so it’s not a trailer queen,” Marc—a member of the Syracuse
Corvette Club—adds. “I can always tell what kind of summer we’ve had by the mileage on the car
at the end of the season.” Two years ago, when the CNY summer weather was good, he put some 3,700 miles on it. “Last year, I was lucky to get 1,500 miles on it,
because we had such rainy weather,” Marc says while noting the five inches of snow that fell in Fulton
the week before we spoke with him.
As the weather
permits, Marc has the choice of two black Vettes—his C6, and this C1. But which does he prefer? “People ask me
constantly which one I like better and I say that I like them both for different reasons, they’re totally different,
unique vehicles,” he says. “They then say, ‘Yeah, but which one do you like better?’, and I say, “I
really can’t pick which one that I like better. But, if you mean which one that I’d sell if I had to get rid of
one of them, the C6 is gone! I’d never sell the ’59. They’re totally different, unique vehicles.”
Does Marc have
any advice for those seeking an early Corvette for a cruiser or a project car? “Good luck! If you’re fortunate
enough to get one, you’re going to pay for it,” He says. “The route to go is
cosmetic, as opposed to original numbers. Those are nice, but you can run into some big bucks when you start doing some cosmetic
work on them. But for an everyday driver, you would look for different things. In my case, I was lucky because I got a car
that’s not only an investment, but we found that everything was right on it. For an everyday driver, you wouldn’t
necessarily have to have all that. But it’s doing much better than my 401 (K) plan lately!
As the all-too-short warm weather season returns to Central New York, Marc will likely take his ’59 out for spirited
drives on many of the region’s scenic and twisty highways, which include roads like U.S. Highway 20 past the apple orchards
(and fictitious Giant) of Cardiff, and New York State Highway 14, which leads into Watkins Glen. If L. Frank Baum drove this
’59, you have to wonder if he would have written The Great Road Trip to Oz. (Or maybe another verse to “See the
U.S.A. in Your Chevrolet.”)
cf
Written by SCOTT ROSS
Photos
by Dino Petrocelli
CONGRATULATIONS MARC ON BEING CHOOSEN AS A FEATURE ARTICLE IN CORVETTE FEVER!
Click on any picture in article to view it larger.
|
