Man’s 1958 Corvette Found After He Sold It 60 Years Ago
Man’s 1958 Corvette Found After He Sold It 60 Years Ago
Man’s 1958 Corvette Found After He Sold It 60 Years Ago
The owner of this 1958 Corvette never forgot about it, and now, decades after he sold it, a car hunter managed to track it down.
Over the years, we’ve heard our fair share of stories involving people searching for their old car or their parent’s or grandparent’s vintage ride, and in many cases, they manage to track down those vehicles after years of diligent hunting. That’s also the case with the 1958 Corvette featured in a recent episode of Lost & Found Muscle Cars, which tells us the tale of a young man who was gifted the 1958 Corvette nearly 60 years ago, was forced to sell it just two years later, and then spent a very long time trying to track it down.
It all began back in early 1963, when Parma, Ohio resident Virginia Buehner bought the 1958 Corvette for her son, Dick, after inheriting some money from a relative. At the time, this was quite the catch for young Dick, who was a student at Bowling Green State University. As one might imagine, that made him the big man on campus, but this euphoria didn’t last long. Just two years later, the Corvette developed an exhaust leak, at which point Dick’s father made him sell the car over concerns that it could hurt him.
As one might imagine, the younger Buehner did sell the car, but never forgot about it – rather, he went on to have four kids and frequently told them stories of the many experiences he enjoyed in the C1 during his short ownership stint, and in the back of his mind, also wondered where the car might have wound up. Even after selling the Corvette, he retained its original bill of sale, owner’s manual, and license plate, which his son, Brett Buehner, still has.
Unfortunately, Dick didn’t exactly have the kind of income needed to hunt down and buy back his beloved 1958 Corvette after spending his life working as a teacher and moonlighting in the Army Reserves. However, upon hearing this story, Wes Eisenschenk of Lost & Found Muscle Cars was obviously intrigued, and decided to track down Dick’s 1958 Corvette after having done this a whopping 900 times previously.
During the course of his research, Eisenschenk discovered that this 1958 Corvette was one of 36 given away as part of VH1’s contest in the late ’80s that were later sold to an artist named Peter Max. Like the rest, Dick’s Corvette had been sitting in storage for many years before Max wound up selling them in 2016, a process made famous by the Lost Corvettes documentary and sweepstakes. The 1958 Corvette was sold yet again just last year, and now, the new owners have extended an invitation to Brett to drive the car – making for a fascinating story that came full circle, indeed.