Choosing whether to restore or resto-mod an older corvette isn’t always easy. While wrestling with the merits of bringing back an original versus tampering with a classic, the final decision might depend on several factors. Often it’s dictated by the condition and history of the vehicle. After considering his options on a dilapidated ’63 split window, John Daniels’ direction was fairly obvious. Through his friend John Vestri of Vestri’s Vettes, a firm specializing in resurrecting non-original donor corvettes, he’d found a suitable project car in Arizona that had a good body and interior. But, the original running gear was gone, and a newer Chevy 350 crate engine was in the engine bay. lacking any numbers-matching parts, or any significant provenance, doing a resto-mod on this beleaguered corvette was basically a given.
