Moncton, NB’s Brian Harper says he’s not a Corvette guy but you might not believe it when you look at his 1960 Corvette coupe featured on these pages.  "I built a lot of muscle cars and street rods over the years,” says Harper. “But I always liked the looks of the ’58-’60 Vettes. To me these were the real American sports car.”
     In 2002, Harper decided it was time to stop admiring from afar and find a Vette of his own to build. It didn’t take long for Harper to find seven candidates all within 200 miles of Moncton. Problem was, of those seven cars one was not for sale at any price and Harper was only able to negotiate an actual viewing of two. “Everything I found had been sitting for at least 20 years and two of them had been off the road since 1976.” Prospects were dimming when Harper had a business trip to St. John’s, NL. A co-worker mentioned a friend of his had a 1960 Vette at his wedding in 1986. A couple of phone cars later, Harper and his co-worker were at the Vette owner’s home.
     The Vette wasn’t exactly leading a pampered life in a cozy garage. When they walked out behind the house, Harper spied an old truck freight box at the back of the lot. Sure enough, that’s where the Vette lived. “When we opened the roll-up door I could tell it was rough, but it was all there,” says Harper. “I’d heard of these ‘barn find’ stories before but now I was living it.” Harper hoped his Vette quest was over, but unfortunately this “barn” find was not for sale. It took two years for the owner to realize he was never going to build the car and Harper finally had his Vette.
     On June 20, 2004, Harper and his wife took a boat ride to St. John’s to retrieve the Vette and almost exactly three years later the car was finished and ready for its debut at the 2007 Atlantic Nationals, which is where we first spied this little yellow Corvette and decided you needed to see it, too.
     Since he loved the car’s original body lines, Harper didn’t change anything there. He did choose to paint the side coves the same colour — 2000 Corvette Millenium Yellow — as the rest of the car. “This is not the norm, but I felt it made the car look longer, lower,” says Harper, who also removed the round reflectors under the taillights and filled the windshield washer nozzles. While Harper loved the body lines on the 1960 Corvette, he did want to make some modern upgrades.
     The original frame had survived box storage intact and required only a good sand blasting and repainting, but the front suspension was replaced with a Jim Myers bolt-in unit which meant the Vette now had adjustable QA1 Carrera coilovers and tubular upper and lower control arms with a power rack and pinion unit. The stock posi rear end with 3.55 gears was kept but the rear springs were dearched and spring shackle eyes were reversed to keep the car’s stance low. The Corvette now has SSBC disc brakes on all four corners  and rides on 17x7 Boyd Coddington Smoothies wrapped in BFG 215x55R17 T/A radials.
     Under the hood, this Vette originally had a 283 ci fuel injected engine but that’s been significantly upgraded with a stock 1995 Corvette Gen II LT1 350/345 hp engine mated to a 1986 Borg Warner T5 manual.
     The interior is essentially restored to stock by Al Knoch but the FM stereo/CD player are updates and the mechanical tach was changed to electronic and all other gauges were restored by Clocks by Roger. Harper says this Corvette was not only a tough car to find but the most difficult restoration project he’s undertaken to date. “But it sure turned out nice,” he says.  No arguing that point.