In 1990, a Long Island carpenter by the name of Dennis Amodeo won the prize of a lifetime for a Corvette fan: one of every model year Corvette built from 1953 through 1989, courtesy of the music television network VH1. Renowned visual artist Peter Max soon acquired the cars for an elaborate art project that never came to fruition, and for 25 years the cars sat, largely ignored and only occasionally moved from one New York City storage location to another. That is until a Corvette fan and automotive consultant helped broker a deal to buy the cars. Now, thanks to their new owners, 36 pieces of Corvette history will soon be back on the road, and if all goes as planned, back on the market.
The convoluted tale of the "Peter Max Corvettes" goes like this: Not long after Amodeo won with cars with much fanfare and celebration on a VH1 special, he received a phone call from Peter Max, who requested a meeting to discuss a deal to buy the cars. As Max explained to New York Magazine: "I'm not a car guy. I never drive," so his interest in the cars was solely from an artistic (and somewhat self-promotional) standpoint. Max had first viewed the collection at a 1990 auto show, and was struck with a bold vision of painting all the cars in psychedelic designs and colors...as Peter Max is wont to do.
Max and Amodeo struck a deal, and the cars have sat, languishing in various storage garages for the past quarter of a century. Not a drop of psychedelic paint and/or coloring was ever applied.
Fast-forward to June of 2014. Corvette collector and Dream Car Consulting founder Chris Mazzilli was showing his vintage Corvette at a car show, when, as Mazzilli relates, "This guy walks up and starts asking me questions about values and restoration costs on a series of Corvettes. At one point I stopped him and said, 'You're talking about the Peter Max Corvettes, aren't you?'"
The guy was Peter Heller, and he was indeed speaking in regard to the "Peter Max Corvettes." As The New York Times reported in a recent article, Heller had been approached by Max to find a new storage facility for the cars, and the discussion soon turned to the possibility of Heller buying the cars from Max.
Max and Heller ultimately agreed on an unknown sum to buy the cars lock, stock and barrel. Some of the cars, Heller soon realized, could be show-ready with relatively basic restoration, and he plans to have even most dilapidated vehicles brought back to all of their chrome-plated and fuel-injected glory.
When complete, the collection will return to the market, hoping to deliver a tidy return on Heller's investment and keep the wheels ablazin' on the once forgotten Corvettes of Peter Max...
To learn more about the VH1/"Peter Max Corvettes," visit VH1MaxCorvette.com.
