Michael Brown’s Massive Corvette Collection
Michael Brown’s Massive Corvette Collection
Michael Brown’s Massive Corvette Collection
What happens when you love Corvettes and making motion pictures, too?
Well, you’ve probably just entered the life of Michael Brown, who has become one of the best-known and most dedicated fans of Chevrolet’s fantastic sports car over the past few years.
Of course, he produced The Quest that debuted to rave reviews last year. The film recaps the beginnings of Corvette Racing while telling the emotional story of Chip Miller and then his son’s quest to find the 1960 class-winning #3 Corvette, restore it, and then return it to Le Mans in 2010, with one of the original drivers, legendary racer John Fitch, behind the wheel to mark the 50th anniversary of the car’s win.
But Brown’s love for Corvettes goes back much further. As a junior in high school, he fell in love instantly with the 1963 Split Window, vowed to own one someday, and finally fulfilled that dream more than 20 years after that ?love at first sight? moment.
?Though I didn’t set out to have a collection when I acquired my first Corvette in 1985, it did evolve to that over the next 25+ years,? Brown says. ?My initial Vette remains the cornerstone of the collection, a beautifully designed classic ?63 Split Window Coupe.?
The collection grew so much, in fact, that in 2006 he designed and built an amazing garage to house his collection of Corvettes, memorabilia of all kinds including signs, photos, and neon, and even a Corvette safe to hold the titles and paperwork to the cars. The garage is on his personal home site, so it’s not open to the public except on special occasions when he hosts area Corvette clubs and even the National Corvette Museum.
But now, thanks to a recently revamped website called hookedonvettes.com, you can see inside Brown’s garage and take a look at a little piece of ?Corvette Heaven,? which features 13 Vettes from five of the six generations (no C4), ranging from a 1954 model all the way up to a 2012 ZR1 Centennial Edition. Those two cornerstones, by the way, were featured in a couple of commercials that Brown entered in Chevy’s recent Super Bowl ad contest.
The website not only features photos and facts about each of the Corvettes in his collection but also brings them to life by spotlighting each through videos of them on the road, with Brown planted behind the wheel. In fact, on sunny days, you still might just see one of the cars stretching their legs on the roads of Texas.
And like the rest of us, Brown is eagerly awaiting the introduction of the seventh generation Corvette next year. We have a feeling he?ll somehow make room in that garage for a 2014 model!