When Chevrolet finally decided to put its 6.2-liter V8 in the middle of its famed sports car, the Corvette, the world celebrated. Perhaps no one, though, celebrated as much as Jack Wendel, the enthusiast artist (or the vandal, depending on your point of view) who’s already hacking up his car after just 1,000 miles to make the custom race car for the road of his dreams.
You may have seen Wendel’s project on his Facebook and YouTube pages, or on our very own site. His work has a way of obtaining strong reactions and he has a few projects on the go, but none are so controversial as the C8 Corvette Stingray build that he has been working on for the past few months.
Related: It Takes Some Balls To Chop A Brand New C8 Corvette And Make A C2 And Art Deco-Inspired Custom Build
Wendel is a Corvette fan and he’s owned a few throughout his life. He has rebodied C5 Corvettes in the past, but the price of updating the interior, the brakes, the suspension, and more adds up and it doesn’t really make sense now that the C8 exists. To his critics, who say he’s hacking up a good car, he says do the math.
All in, it’s projected to cost $100,000
By his own estimates, his latest project should cost him around $100,000 in total. Along with the price of the C8 (he chose to get a convertible because he loves them), he expects to spend $7,000 on molds, $5,000 in materials, $10,000 in wheels and tires, and another $10,000 on paint and bodywork.
Wendel isn’t just some nut with deep pockets, though. He says he’s been building race cars his whole life, used to be a motorcycle mechanic, worked as a prototype fabricator, a machinist, a 3D designer, an electronics engineer, and got his degree in mechanical engineering just to gain the technical knowledge to build his own car.
Read Also: Custom Shop Transforming A C8 Corvette Into A Cadillac Supercar
And it won’t just be for him, either; he hopes to someday produce and sell his creations. Specifically, he’s interested in selling the art-deco model as a turn-key car. He recently bought the website DelahayeUSA.com, the name of a manufacturer that made cars in the ’30s and inspired his design, from which he hopes to sell rebodied C8 Corvettes.
CarScoops’ John Halas had the opportunity to talk to Jack and who from the get-go, openly admitted to us that he is fully aware of how controversial this project is to a lot of people. To that end, we’ll note that we understand not everyone will or has to like what they see (even if we haven’t actually seen the end result to judge it properly and fairly), but we don’t agree with the online hatred about a car guy who is using his own money, resources, time and hands to build something for and by himself.
CarScoops: How did you come up with the idea of creating a coachbuilt Corvette C8?
Jack Wendel: I’ve wanted a mid-engine sports car with obscene levels of horsepower ever since I saw my first Pantera with a tunnel ram and two 4-barrel carbs sticking out. I’m still kicking myself for passing on a Pantera project car and buying a ‘64 ‘Vette instead. Now Pantera prices are astronomical.
I’ve been racing my entire life with the goal to eventually design, build and race my own car. I needed a mid-engine chassis and I can’t build one as sophisticated as the C8 for the base price of $60,000 so I bought it as a donor car.
The ultimate goal is a mid-engine Art Deco inspired race car. This was supposed to be a “quick and dirty” project that jumped in line while waiting on Art Deco fenders for the other car.
CarScoops: Did you buy the donor C8 brand new or used?
Jack Wendel: I bought the C8 brand new. Hey, I drove it for 1,000 miles before I started disassembling it! I ordered it 2 years ago and waited 18 months to get it. I paid MSRP for it. Several people suggested using a wreck. But a ‘Vette with a salvage title is valueless. I wasn’t about to invest all this time and money into building “a wrecked car”.
CarScoops: Why the C8 and not an older Corvette?
Jack Wendel: I’ve owned a lot of ‘Vettes over the years. I’ve been waiting for GM to make a mid-engine one forever. When they finally did, I jumped on it! Until the C8, my re-bodies have used C5s as donors because they offered the best cost/value for a donor car. But I added it up and by the time I added the cost of a better interior, brakes, suspension and horsepower, the cost of modifying a C5 (or C6 or C7) was just too close to the base price of a C8.
Find me a better donor car that will offer this level of performance, comfort, and technology for $60k and I’ll use it next time in a few years, there will be tens of thousands of C8 Corvettes around. They’ll have depreciated like any other used car so the donor cost will drop drastically. The C8 will be the Fiero donor car of the future.”
The C2 generation 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Z06
CarScoops: What’s the theme of the build?
Jack Wendel: My theme is ‘What might the C2 have looked like if GM had made it mid-engine’. I’m not converting the C8 into a C2. I’m building a C2 INSPIRED mid-engine car from a C8 donor. Those that believe I’m trying to “convert the C8 Corvette into a C2” will obviously be critical of the results because they are using the wrong yardstick to measure it by.
If GM had made the C2 mid-engine it wouldn’t look like the C2 either and there wouldn’t even be a front engine C2 to compare it to.
CarScoops: How much do you think the project will cost you and how long will take to complete?
Jack Wendel: If you don’t count the value of my time and if I had started with the cheaper coupe, the costs would have been as follows:
C8 donor: $60k
Molds: $7k
Fiberglass and materials: $5k
Wheels and tires: $10k
Finish paint and body: $10k So $92k.
I’ll be right at $100k with the extra cost of the HTC.
I’m a convertible freak so I bought a hard top convertible (HTC). This added $7,500 to the cost but I felt it was worth it to me. I would spend more than that in time and effort designing and fabricating my own system. You can’t buy a Pantera convertible for $100k!
My plan is to have the body rough finished by the end of this year (2021). From there I’ll hand it off to a high quality body shop to produce a show quality paint and bodywork. That’s where the $10k in my budget comes from.
CarScoops: Have you done this before, and how difficult is it?
Jack Wendel: I’ve been building and racing cars my entire life. I used to be a motorcycle mechanic, worked as a prototype fabricator, machinist, 3D designer, computer programmer, electronics engineer, robotics technician and thermal / structural engineer. I got my degree in mechanical engineering just so I had the technical knowledge to design my own car. It’s just taken me this long to finally decide to pull the trigger.
Difficult? This makes EVERYTHING I’ve ever done look simple by comparison!
CarScoops: Is this a one-off build or are you planning to sell it as a kit?
Jack Wendel: I plan to sell turn key cars. I’m on lists for a Z06, E-Ray and ZR1. I plan to convert each of those when they become available. It’ll likely be at least 2 years before I actually get any of them. Again, I can’t add those levels of performance and technology to a base C8 as cheaply as GM will sell them for.
Future plans include using the chassis designed and built by Charley Strickland of Strickland racing. He will also be 3D printing bodies for me. At that point I’ll be switching to one of the 632 cubic inch 1,000 horsepower fuel injected create engines for power. Those cars will be my ultimate goal of being able to drive “a race car with license plates” that I designed and built.
For those that don’t know, I recently bought DelahayeUSA.com. We sell cars heavily influenced by Art Deco designs but modernized. These new car designs will add to our product offerings. My business plan includes hiring at risk youth and teaching them how to do this as a career.
I also bought a $10k scanner with plans to scan and 3D print car bodies.
CarScoops: We have to ask, what’s the deal with the C5-based C1 build and the Plymouth Prowler we see in the pictures?
Jack Wendel: They’re all my cars. I own more cars than any rational person should own, including a 1,600 horsepower , dual nitrous ‘68 Camaro outlaw pro mod. Back when I raced it 1,600 horsepower was a lot. Now it’s just entry level.
I didn’t create that C5/C1 cross. I was working on my own C5/C1 cross and that one came up for sake so I bought it to drive while I finished mine and as a marketing tool for my car. It gets a lot of attention!
As a side note, I have deposits on both a Grullon GT8 and a Chupacabra. I believe in supporting others in this industry and plan to promote their cars as well as my own.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
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