Gasser Corvette Conversion

When Dave Glass decided to transform his classic ’62 Corvette into a Gasser-style racer, he knew the importance of not ruining the car, and making sure it would be possible to make it look original again if need be. After all, he’s been a Bloomington Gold judge for more than a dozen years, so he knows his way around a trim plate. Not only that, GM had him restore a ’53 Corvette to commemorate the millionth Corvette in 1992. He’s been working on Corvettes for more than 25 years at his shop, D&M Corvette Specialists.

Gasser History

Before getting into the details of his unusual Gasser treatment, though, we should note a bit of background that led up to it. For those not familiar with this era of drag racing, supercharged Gassers were some of the fan favorites in the Sixties. These wild, nearly uncontrollable machines were headliners at events around the country. With their short wheelbases and body styles that were anything but aerodynamic, the Gassers were challenging to drive and fun to watch—from a safe distance. Many of the earlier machines ran Oldsmobile or Cadillac power but, as the years progressed, entries with blown Chevrolet V-8s and Chrysler Hemis appeared.


Among the most popular Gasser body styles were the Willys, both the ‘33 Model 77 and the ‘40 coupe. Some of their drivers (such as Big John Mazmanian, Stone, Woods & Cook, and K.S. Pittman) are nearly as famous today as they were when they campaigned in what would become known as the Gasser Wars. So what does this all have to do with a ’62 Corvette? In addition to restoring Corvettes at their shop, Dave Glass and wife Mary share another automotive passion as well that dates back to the early days of their marriage.


“We watched all the Gassers race at the Nationals in Indy (Indiana) in the Sixties,” he explains. “We are John Mazmanian Gasser fans, so in our collection we built a clone ’40 Willys Coupe with a Blown 392 Hemi. This Hilborn-injected, all-steel car is painted Candy Apple Red (the same as his car).” No surprise, then, that when Dave and Mary went to a Turkey Rod Run in Daytona, Florida back in 2002 and spotted a ’60 Vette with a straight axle, they got real excited. “Everyone loved the car so we tried to buy it, but the owner wouldn’t sell.” Undaunted, they decided to build their own version, using a ’62 Corvette in need of some serious attention.

Race Inspired

“We bought the car about 10 years ago. The car was sitting in a garage, had not been running for some time, and needed a total restoration,” Dave recalls. The Vette, which had been raced previously, had a 350 small-block Chevy (instead of the original 327), four-speed trans and a Dana rear end with traction bars. But the owner lost interest in the project, and Dave took it off his hands, thinking he might bring it back to original spec.


But after his seeing people’s reactions to the 1960 straight-axle Vette in Florida, he decided to pull some parts off his ’33 Willys, which used to run in the 10s back in the early Seventies. To perform the transplant to his Corvette without carving it up, he built a removable subframe for the straight-axle front end. “The purist is still in me,” he admits. “I didn’t want to deface the car.”


In the meantime, Glass had his shop strip the paint down to bare fiberglass, which took a solid two weeks worth of sanding, rather than risking damage from the use of blasting or a chemical strip. “All solid-axle Corvettes are very time consuming, because of all the curves,” he points out. Since there was no trim code back then, he had no idea what the original color was, which freed him up to choose the same maroon that Masmanian used on his Gasser (and which happened to be his favorite color anyway, since his first car, a ’67 Sting Ray, was Marlboro Maroon).