LOS ANGELES — When U.S. Marine Chris Ryan showed up at the LA Auto Show Friday, he thought he was there to give a speech about the veterans support group, Stand for the Troops. Instead, he was gifted a fully restored 1984 Corvette.
“Stuff like this doesn’t happen to me. It really doesn’t,” Ryan said with a grin, moments after he got the keys for the car and fired it up. “I’m over the top right now about this.”
Just yesterday, the 34-year-old had completed a course on sustainable farming that Stand for the Troops had paid for because the college where it was offered didn’t qualify for the GI Bill. Ryan had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during the 15 years he’s served the Marines in light-armored reconnaissance and is preparing to retire.
Little did he know, the charity had recommended him to be the owner of a car restoration business in New York, who was looking for an LA area veteran to donate a restored Corvette as part of an ongoing sweepstakes called The Lost Corvettes.
“He’s a big car guy. He was just looking at the new Corvette Z06,” Dream Car Restorations owner Chris Mazzilli said, moments before he gave Ryan a far earlier vintage 4th generation Corvette with a white paint job, bronze interior and 205-horsepower engine.
Mazzilli’s company did all the work on the car to bring it back to life, just as they’ve done for the rest of a collection of 36 Corvettes that represented each model year from the classic car’s 1953 debut through 1989. The music cable channel VH1 originally gave away the collection to a single winner in 1989.
That winner then sold the collection to pop artist Peter Max, who intended to paint them in his iconic psychedelic style. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the cars sat in various New York City garages for years until they were discovered by a pair of families who bought them and brought in Mazzilli as a consultant to assess their condition.
“All 36 were entombed in 25-plus years of dust with flat tires,” Mazzilli said. “It was the greatest Corvette barn find in history.”
Like the Heller and Spindler families who purchased the cars from Max, Mazzilli also had a background with the armed services, so they started a sweepstake to give the 36 cars to 36 different winners to benefit Stand for the Troops — a charity that works with combat veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries. They’ve given away 28 of the Corvettes so far.
Ryan, who is now the proud owner of the 1984 ‘Vette from the collection, plans to use it as a project car with his 8-year-old son.
“Guys coming up, learning how to work on stuff themselves is such an important thing to do,” he said. “I wanted to have something to show my son how to work on stuff, and this is a perfect timed blessing for our family.”