Photos and story by Paul Sontrop

Growing up in Wasaga Beach, Shawn Freer couldn’t wait for summer to come. In Wasaga, that can be a long wait, where winter comes early and stays late. For car culture, Wasaga always has been as good as it gets both for variety, car volume and perfect setting. It was probably as close as it gets to the idealized town in the film, “American Graffiti” (land locked Modesto California) with the addition of the longest fresh water beach in the world. At close proximity to Toronto and other major Ontario cities, the pool of great cars drawn to the biggest and busiest beach in Canada is huge to this day.

Every August over 500 Corvettes converge on the town from all over North America on Corvette Weekend. Perhaps Shawn felt the need to show up with the best one. Seeing all those examples of his favorite car certainly raised the bar on build criteria. Back in Shawn’s formative years, he and his pals would head up to what was referred to as the main end – more specifically – the show off end. Cars, bikes, bodies. On any hot summer weekend, the stream of cool cars was endless. At the time, a lot of Shawn’s friends were part of a local car club called the Wasaga Beach Hot Rodders. While most of them drove late ’60s Camaros and Trans AMs, in Shawn’s eyes, there was just nothing more cool than a drop top Corvette with side pipes and a throbbing 427. He loved the lines of a 66 in particular, having seen his favorite show up week after week - and he got the bug. One day he would build up his own version.

Eventually he would go to Toronto to locate and buy the ‘66 pictured here. He intended only to tinker with it a bit to keep it mobile and reliable. He never dreamed at the time that it would ever morph into its present day version. But we all know what happens at car shows and after a few of those Corvette Weekends, Shawn got super motivated. The age-old one-thing-leads-to-another syndrome. To set a criteria that would lead to something truly unique, Shawn would search Corvette photos on the internet for hours over a five-year period and keep what he thought was the best of every idea that he saw. He steadily put these ideas all together while working out the logistics of the build – not to mention budgets.

Shawn began with a complete teardown of the ’66 Corvette, removing the crud and repairing or replacing the basics of the car to properly receive paint and newer hardware. The door handles were shaved and then the back hatch and bumps behind the seats were molded and prepped. Next, the engine compartment was cleaned up and finessed to match the plans for the engine esthetics.

Once the frame was shipped from California from Newman car creations complete with air ride suspension, Shawn installed a newer Corvette steering system with the addition of column and wheel. Shawn then purchased custom aluminum wheels from California and did several fittings.

Simultaneously, the engine was being built up. Shawn bought a brand new LS7 427 fuel injected stroker that puts out 600hp. He did most of the assembly in his garage at nights. Before the engine bay was finished, headers and side exhaust were designed and fitted to best advantage and sound. The LS7 was hooked up to a Tremec 5-speed hydraulic tranny. The Tremec is hooked to a Paul Newman rear end that re-sends all the horsepower to the wheels though carbon fibre axles.

The partially completed Corvette was eventually sent down to Tom and Linda and their crew at Lowdown Hot Rods in Cambridge, ON for custom mods, interior and paint. The yellow paint is early 1980s Corvette. The custom interior was done in a matching yellow and black scheme. It includes modern air conditioning, new Corvette seats, air ride suspension controls and colour video screen with GPS.

Once returned to Shawn, the car was then sent to Scott Beatty and his amazing staff at Beatty Automotive in Barrie, ON for adjusting and fine-tuning.

Since then, Shawn has done a lot of serious cruising with the car and very proudly showed up at the next annual Corvette Weekend in Wasaga to admiring eyes. The glowing ‘66 Corvette also took home 5 awards at Performance World in Toronto in its debut.