The Supercar Registry - July '06 Feature Car

July 2006 Feature Car: 1969 Baldwin-Motion *Phase III* GT1970 Baldwin-Motion *Phase III* GTOwned by: Larry Clainhttps://www.yenko.net/features/2006/pantera1.jpg1945 - 2006 <table borderColor="#FF9933" height="100%" width="100%" border="0"> <tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21"></td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">'69 Baldwin-Motion GT</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">'70 Baldwin-Motion GT</td></tr> <tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Engine (factory):</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">L71 427/435hp</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">L71 427/435hp</td></tr> <tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Engine (dealer):</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">L71 w/3-barrell carb</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">LS7 w/aluminum heads</td></tr> <tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Trans (factory):</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">THM400 automatic</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">M-21 (4-speed)</td></tr> <tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Rear (factory):</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">3.36 posi</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">4.10 posi</td></tr> <tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Exterior color (factory):</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Monoco Orange</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Dover White</td></tr><tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Interior color:</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Black leather</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Standard Black</td></tr>
<tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Factory Options:</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Tilt/tele wheel, power steering, am/fm, audio alarm system, F41 suspension</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">n/a</td></tr>
<tr>
<td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Dealer Options:</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Full "Phase III" treatment</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Full "Phase III" treatment</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Original Selling Dealer:</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Baldwin Chevrolet, NY</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Baldwin Chevrolet, NY</td>
</tr>
<tr><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="25%" height="21">Final Selling Dealer:</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Motion Performance, NY</td><td vAlign="top" align="center" width="37.5%" height="21">Motion Performance, NY</td></tr></tbody></table>

1969 Baldwin-Motion SS427 Phase III GT Corvette:

"I will never forget the excitment I felt, when I first saw the cover of Nov. 1969's, HI-Performance Car's Magazine (see it below) with the Baldwin Motion '69 SS-427 GT Corvette on it at my local Quicktrip store. At that time I seldom could afford it, but this time I bought that issue and sat in my car in the parking lot and read the entire article at least twice. I fell totally in love with the car on the cover. I can still remember wanting that car or at least one just like it. I liked it so bad that it was a factor in me foolishly tradeing the Black '61 315 hp FI vette I owned at the time for a '66 SS396 Chevelle just so that I could be as fast as some of the other guys that I ran around with. I just had to have a Rat Motor car."

"Then fast forward to 1972, where I was buying and selling used cars and expecially muscle cars and Corvette's. I will never forget the feeling of excitement when a dealer that I bought a lot of my used cars from, showed up with this all Black w/Gold stripe, '69 Vette cpe.. Of course I instantly reconized it as the same car as on the cover of the Car's magazine. Man I just had to have it and I paid $3,250 for it which at that time was full boat retail for a used Vette. (NO I don't want my money back..! But thanks for the offer)"

"I have found out that Both of my Motion vette's came from Ronnie Diamond Mtr. Co. in Dallas Tx. This one in early '72 and the other in early '74. When I bought the '69 it was already painted Black with a candy gold stripe down the center of the car and around the tail. I would love to find the original owner and/or any old photos of this '69 Baldwin Motion SS427 Phase III GT. I do beleive that it "is" the same car on the cover of Cars magazine. In the article it was painted Hugger orange with a black stripe. It was shown in the NY auto show in the spring of 1969. I have owned it for all these years and finally only now am I trying to document it. The tank sticker showes it came from Baldwin Chev as the new car dealer and shows it to be a 435 hp car with Th400 trans. That is consistent with the car shown in the magazine article. I have contacted Ronnie Diamond the car lot owner in Dallas, but he can't remember anything about the car at all. Said he had not kept any records from that long ago. Please understand that I have already talked to Joel Rosen in person all about this car. He has no memory of the previous owners of this car. I still want to try to locate the original owner to see if I can find any old photos of it after Joel sold it, so please don't contact him about this. He has heard enough about it I am sure. Over the years that I have owned this car I just worked for a living. It was very hard to hold on to these cars all these years especially through a divorce, but it is still mine and I know that it is in bad need of restoration. I am not proud of how the car looks now. But it is still good mechanically and it only has 44,000 mi on it. I am not really fond of Hugger Orange but I will for sure paint it that color if it turns out to be the actual car on the cover. Marty Schorr the editor of Car's magazine, recentely told me that it was Hugger orange when he shot the pic of it and not red like it looks on the cover. I want to see this car restored back to how it looked way back when it was at the NY auto show. Money could not buy it from me. I ran a body shop for a few years and can and will do my own work so that it will be done just the way I want it to come out. So Far everything I can find out about this car is consistent with the one in the Magazine articles."


https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm12.jpg https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm21.jpg https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm31.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm41.jpg https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm51.jpg https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm61.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm71.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm81.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm91.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm101.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/69bm111.jpg


1970 Baldwin-Motion SS427 Phase III GT Corvette:

"Back in 1974, I would have never thought that I would be lucky enough to find a used Baldwin Motion vette for sale.
You can imagine my suprise one day when on a business trip to Dallas when I located a White '70 and bought it."

"My involvement with performance cars started back in the early ‘70’s. I owned a small used car dealer in Tulsa Ok. that specialized in Corvettes. My business was called Super Car Center. When I would run low on performance car’s I would to go to Dallas and OKC or Kansas City to buy Corvettes and Camaro's, and or Mustangs to sell off my lot. Usually, I couldn't get enough to sell. I was on one of my regular trips to Dallas (I could kill two birds with one trip as my Mother had married a Texan in Ft Worth so I would go see her and buy a car or two while I was in the area). Whenever I was in Dallas I always stopped by Diamond used cars. I had bought a few Corvettes wholesale from them from time to time so I always dropped by just to see what they had that week. They always had 10 to 30 Vette's and other Hi-perf muscle cars on their lot. I pulled into the driveway and setting pointing at me was a white Baldwin Motion Vette in a row of regular Corvettes. I spotted it right off because of the hood and "Ferrari" style headlights that made it stand out from the rest of the Vette’s parked next to it. I raced into the office and told Ronnie that I wanted to buy that Vette. He informed me that it was already sold. The guy he had sold it to had already gone through two clutch's and one set of head gaskets and the only reason it was there that day, was that it was just out of the repair shop for the owner to come pick it up after work. He was not too happy with this guy, but he had financed the car himself and he told me that he was sick of the dam thing costing him money to fix because the cost was just adding to the total of the loan. He said he was going to put the kid into another car if he messed it up again, because the note was getting just too big and he wanted to put the guy in another car that would not be braking so easy. This was not uncommon for a dealer to do back then and I knew from experience that a lot of Corvettes would wind up back where they were sold from, when the heat of summer made them too hot to cruise around in. Often they would trade them back in for something more practical. I told Ronnie that I "WANTED" that car really bad and to call me when or if he ever got it back on trade! He said he just might do just that, as the guy was a real problem with this car and he was tired of spending money on the car. The car only had 7,500 mi on it at that time. He said he was sure fed up with problems with him and if he had one more problem with him, he was going to put him in something else. He called me about 2 months later and said the guy had blown the Motor and the clutch this time. He had overheated the head gaskets again, only this time it had warped the block and ruined the motor and they had put a new crate LS-6 back in it with cast iron heads and sold the guy something else. He asked if I still wanted it? You can guess my answer so he told me to bring him $3,700 and come get the dam thing out of his sight. He said he was sick of looking at it. He said it runs good now with the new motor in it but, if it didn't make it back to Tulsa not to call him!!!. He assured me it was running like a new car with the new parts. So I said I will be there in the morning and was waiting for him to come in when he opened his lot the next morning. I don't think I slept a wink that night. It made it back to Tulsa just fine. With a 4:10 rear end, it was a gas hog though."

"When I got it back to Tulsa, I was going through the glove box in the back and found the original owners receipt from Baldwin Chevrolet, and signed by a Dave Bean to a H. Roger Lawler of Dallas Tx. It was dated Jan 21. 1971. It cost $13,620.00. This is the most expensive GT vette that Motion ever built. When I got the car it had around 9,000 mi on it and ran like a striped ass ape. It would churn the back tires so bad that it would drift sideways in 2nd and 3rd and scare the [censored] out of you. You could not get a back tire to hold it down on the street."

"I have kept this car just like it was ever since then. It only has 15,000 mi on it now. The paint has gone bad and the motor has a rod tapping in it. The last time I drove it was at Hallett motor raceway a sports car racetrack, near Tulsa where I live. By then I was just starting to race a ’63 Vette in SCCA B/P class so I was not using the Motion car much. The local Corvette club had an auto cross and I took the Motion out there on a trailer and gave it hell. It was so fast it was not funny. I put gumball autocross tires on to get good traction in the corners. Needless to say I won the fastest time of Day with the Motion. But when we loaded it on the trailer and the motor was cooled down I could hear a faint tapping noise and knew right away that I had spun a rod bearing going around the corners too fast and starving the motor of oil. So the car got parked and forgotten till the fall of 2003."

"Some friends of mine and I dragged it out of the storage building and washed it up and took it to the Super Car Renunion at St Louis on Labor Day 2004. I have always dreamed of finding the original owner ever since I bought it. I had gave it a half ass try back then but gave it up. Now thanks to computers I know the "Rest of the Story". I have finally located the son of the owner of the car. Roger Lawler was actually not the actual owner, but instead it was a HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION PRESENT for his son!!! Wow what a present. When I graduated in 1963, I was glad to get a weekend at the lake and $200 cash. It turns out that the son, didn't tell his father just exactly what he was buying. The daddy told me that he was pissed when he arrived at Joels and found out just what a HOT ROD his son had bought. Daddy was a land developer in the Dallas area and I guess money was not a factor for them. They flew up and drove it back to Dallas. When I talked to Joel Rosen in person, at the Super car reunion in St. Louis in 2003, he told me all these things that I didn't know about the car. He also said that the son had called him years ago and said the car was wrecked and all these years he had just presumed that it was totaled and didn't exist anymore. His jaw sure dropped when I informed him that it was still around and in one piece. Joel later told me that the son about drove him crazy wanting to know when it would be ready. Apparently he was in such a hurry that he decided to skip having them install a Hone OD unit that he had ordered and took it home just as soon as they could get it out of the body shop. Joel also told me that it was the MOST EXPENSIVE GT vette that he ever sold because the kid wanted the biggest & baddest, fastest, motor he could build..!!! So Joel put a alum head LS-7 in the car. Meeting Joel Rosen in person, was a dream that I have had for most of my adult life. I remember calling him up about the '69 vette and asking him about it back in 1975 or 76 and he told me then that it sounded like I just might have his old car. I was always going to drive it up to show it to him but never did."


https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/70bm11.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/70bm21.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/70bm31.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/70bm41.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/70bm51.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/70bm6.jpg

https://www.yenko.net/features/2006/70bm71.jpg