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Comprehensive Corvette Collection, Heartbreakingly Rotting Away in NYC, Gets a Second Chance

By Rain Noe - October 30, 2014

in Cars

In 1990 Dennis Amodeo, a carpenter from Long Island, won a rather amazing VH1 giveaway: A collection of 36 Corvettes, one from each year from the model's birth in 1953 up to the then-recent 1989. Something like that is an American boy or man's dream come true, the crappy 1980s models notwithstanding.

But it's also an American man's dream to receive six-figure checks, so when pop artist Peter Max offered $250,000 for the collection that same year, Amodeo handed over all five pounds of car keys. Max had some kind of art project in mind for the cars, and got as far as taping up the sides of some of them for color tests. But that's as far as Max got, so the cars just sat. And sat. And sat. For decades.

It's safe to say that Max is no Jay Leno. Despite dropping a quarter of a million dollars on the cars, Max couldn't be bothered to pick up some car covers—not even for the open-topped models.

Apparently no one told him that if you don't store cars up on blocks, the tires go out of round.

The cars just sat there rotting in a succession of New York parking garages. Emblems and trim were stolen, cars were vandalized, the collection slowly deteriorating in value and condition from pure neglect.

Thankfully a guy named Peter Heller has stepped in and purchased the collection from Max, price undisclosed, with the plan of restoring and selling them. I hope to God he gets Jay Leno, or someone who can actually appreciate and properly care for the cars, on the line.

Via The New York Times

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James Ryan

10 years ago

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This would make a great reality tv show to watch how bad it all is and what and how some great car guys go about saving some or all of them and then rewarding in some national contest all of them to someone just as in the begining.
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Scott

10 years ago

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What a bizarre contest prize, a true white elephant in the original sense of the term. Poor Dennis probably got hit with a six figure tax bill, and to keep the cars he would have needed to find a 10000 square foot garage, and then would have had to hire a full time caretaker to keep the collection in running order.

And of course this was before Ebay made it easy to sell off 50 cars in a hurry. No wonder he dumped them so cheap to a single buyer- an average price of around $5k per car was ludicrously cheap even in 1990.
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c

10 years ago

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Wow. What a sin to just let those cars sit. It's a shame some people have money but no common sense, or sensibility. And no, the 80's Corvettes were not bad cars.
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ncosman

10 years ago

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That's horrible. I am not even a big fan of corvettes, but seeing any cars sitting in this state makes my stomach turn. Some of those early corvettes are worth quite a bit right now. Unfortunately if they haven't been started on a regular basis, they are probably going to need complete engine overhauls in addition to the body work. When a car sits all of the oil inside the engine settles leaving the upper components vulnerable to corrosion (valves, cylinders, cranks, springs etc. One or two seasons of inactivity can cause harm. Decades? Bad news.
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m powers

9 years ago

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Who's Dave?

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