Rare Finds

A 1963 Splitwindow That “Almost” Got Away 
 

- Jerry Heasley

“It just blew me away,” Travis Snyder said. His boss had just moved a few boxes out of the way in the garage. Suddenly, he could make out the front end of an old Corvette. But, what model was this?

“The car didn’t have a front bumper and the headlights were bolted shut. I didn’t know what it was at first until I walked over and started looking at it real close.”

When Travis Snyder graduated from high school in 1995, he went to work at Perry’s Body Shop in the small town of Ness, Kansas. His idea was to see if he liked working on cars for a living before he went off to college. Turns out the young man really hit it off with shop owner Perry Rupp and started to learn the body shop craft.

“He taught me and I’ve just stayed here. We do a lot of restorations.”

Four to five years into his tenure there, Snyder happened to ride with him to Rupp’s house to bring back a Porta Power tool.

“He had a spare down at his house in one of the sheds. We went in there looking for this tool and found that Corvette.”