My Favorite Ride: There's nothing new about this all-original 1966 Corvette

MARTINSVILLE — When Jim Tannehill finally got around to buying that vintage Chevrolet Corvette he's always wanted, the sales tax was more than the car cost brand new more than half a century ago.

Tannehill was a junior at Martinsville High School when he fell crazy in love. Not with his date for the prom, but with the 1963 split-window Corvette he borrowed to drive Sandy Goss to the dance 56 years ago. 

Decades, most of a lifetime, passed before he pursued his love for old Corvettes by purchasing one. Most of the pictures I took of the beautiful car are in black and white, like back in the day.

The Martinsville man had been looking for a second-generation model manufactured between 1963 and 1967, preferably a 1966 one that hadn't been restored, repainted or modified. This kind of top-flight, all-original car would be hard to find, he knew that. 

Six years into the search, he located the perfect car.

J&S Motors in Fairmount, a town of 3,000 an hour's drive north of Indianapolis, is known for its variety of pre-owned Corvettes. One day, Tannehill headed north to check out the inventory.

"I knew they had a bunch of Corvettes," he said. "When I went up there, my wife said, 'Honey, if you see it, the one you want, buy it."

Last week's My Favorite RideIt took 40 years, but Tom Coleman's restored 1934 Ford Tudor is finally a true street rod

He started looking around the showroom, and there she was: a never-updated, never painted, completely original 1966 Corvette Sting Ray convertible with a removable hard top and soft top. The 327, 350-horsepower motor had never been enhanced and the fading Mossport Green paint had some scratches and pitting. Not a speck of rust.

The black upholstery was immaculate.

It was parked next to a restored fire-engine red 1962 model that didn't tempt Tannehilll one bit. It was too fast, too shiny.

He learned the car, called a C2 by Corvette people, had started out in North Dakota, then was in South Dakota and then Illinois before it landed at the Fairmount dealership. It came with a boxful of records that trace the car's history, from mechanical work to trips into Canada where the original owners used the chrome luggage rack to stow their suitcases.

The car has just about all of the extra options available at the time, including power steering ($94.90), a telescopic steering column ($42.15) and gold-wall tires ($46.25). The missing option, and who needs it with a convertible, was air conditioning ($412.90).

J&S had a selection of modified cars, "and they were a lot cheaper," but Tannehill settled on the untouched C2. It cost him $70,000. Plus tax. "I paid more in sales tax that the car cost new."

Yep. If my math is right, Indiana sales tax on the purchase was $4,900. The base price for a 1966 C2 was $4,084. Chevrolet sold 17,762 Corvette convertibles that year.

Tannehill tools around town in the car but doesn't venture far. He and his wife Joan, who has never been behind the wheel of the four-speed, drove the C2 to a southern Indiana winey and back once, about 200 miles round trip. 

He keeps it stored in a barn alongside a zero-turn mower and his John Deere and Kubota tractors. The custom license plate on the car, "Jets 66," isn't a reference to New York's NFL team.

Back in high school during the 1960s, Tannehill was known as "Jimmy Jets." And since that's where this all started, it fits.

Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.