above photos Tony Cenicola / nytimes.com
Above photo David Allee / nymag.com36 vintage Corvettes in a parking garage in Brooklyn.
One Corvette for each year they were made, starting with a pearl-white ’53 (one of only 300) and ending with a red 1989, they were the prize in a contest sponsored by VH1, the cable music channel, in 1989. The contest awarded the whole lot to one winner, Dennis Amodeo, a carpenter from Long Island. HE sold the whole bunch for $500,000 to Peter Max who intended to paint them all as rolling art, but never got around to it. So the Vettes sat and gathered dust for about 20 years. They recieved a lot of publicity... but no love or interest from Peter.
The collection was a promotion envisioned by Jim Cahill who realized the VH1 audience was a good target demographic for any year Corvette and the contest would boost ratings. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/automobiles/collectibles/14corvette.html and http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/11902/
If you want to see more Corvette collections: http://www.corvetteblogger.com/index.cfm?mode=cat&catid=0858DC6A-96E9-F603-0D61AE51B9511412
