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and the deal was done. Now just to wait for the flatbed. My wife, Liz, who was with me all the while and also loves Corvettes, surveyed the exterior and interior of the car very carefully. “This is going to need a ton of work, you realize that, right?” she asked me. “Yeah, that’s obvious. But I’m looking at it as an opportunity to build something really special – I certainly don’t want to do a restoration job – I want to make it a custom,” I responded. “I always really liked Bill Mitchell’s Mako Shark II, so that’s the look I’d like to go for with this.” Liz liked that idea, so it was time to work up a game plan. We then discussed what had to be done and in what order. Ultimately, we decided that a body-off refurb of the chassis, suspension, engine and trans were all in order in addition to the the custom body work and paint I had in mind. A new autobody shop had opened a couple of months earlier a few miles from our home, so it was decided to setup a meeting with its owner, tell him what we had in mind and work out an equitable rate so that he could use what became known as “Project Shark” as fill-in work for his crew to keep them busy during idle times, which were frequent with his new business. The flatbed arrived and loaded up our new acquisition, and the truck followed us back to our home where he unloaded the car in our driveway. Now was the time to take out the camera and get some “before” shots, which is what we did. At that point in my life, I was a freelance contributor to several magazines, one of which was a popular monthly Corvette publication. I had a pleasant working relationship with the editor and I called him up to tell him about the Shark and asked if he’d be interested in me documenting the entire process for a multi-part feature. He said he was interested and requested seeing the “before” photos, which I scanned and emailed to him, he asked if we could wrap the whole thing up in six months so he could run it in six installments and, though this was a tall order (I hadn’t originally planned on doing things in such a hurry), I agreed and we started getting part suppliers on board who wanted “in” on this project. I met with the owner of the autobody shop (which shall remain nameless since it went out of business and was taken over by a new owner) and two of his crew over lunch and I showed him the “before” photos as well as a couple of photos of Bill Mitchell’s Mako Shark II in some Corvette books I brought along. I could see they had a genuine air of excitement at the prospect of working on a custom rather than the day-to-day hammering out dents, replacing bumpers and such. I mentioned that I thought it would make good “fill in” work, but I also said that it had to be completed – lock, stock and barrel – in six months. We did some negotiating and he agreed to give me the “fleet” rate for labor since I’d be supplying the parts for the project. I also played up the fact that his shop would be receiving excellent publicity for the six months the project ran in the magazine, which made him happy. A deal was struck and we shook hands on it.