My 20 years with Barney

[Hib Halverson]

Last week I sold "Barney" my Dark Purple Metallic '95. I'd owned for a little more than 20 years. It took a long time to sell and was listed in a long-running thread in the cars/parts for sale forum. After I sold it people started posting about how sad it was and I got a fair amount of private email asking about the history of the car, so at the end of the for sap posting I wrote a little article about my 20 years with Barney.

I got to thinking, more people might read it if I put a link here in the General forum.

To read it click here

[Dynomite]

Excellent Write Up Hib......

-Solutions-
LAST BUT NOT LEAST
The Story of Barney and a Bit Of ZR-1 History

[Tripler]

Great article Hib . Thanks for sharing that history of an amazing ZR-1 .

[Z51JEFF]

Originally Posted by Hib Halverson

Last week I sold "Barney" my Dark Purple Metallic '95. I'd owned for a little more than 20 years. It took a long time to sell and was listed in a long-running thread in the cars/parts for sale forum. After I sold it people started posting about how sad it was and I got a fair amount of private email asking about the history of the car, so at the end of the for sap posting I wrote a little article about my 20 years with Barney.

I got to thinking, more people might read it if I put a link here in the General forum.

To read it click here

. Hib,the story you wrote did it have a shot of what looked like a silver car on the track with one of the headlights stuck halfway up?

[Hib Halverson]

I've written a lot of stories. Which one are you asking about?

[Z51JEFF]

Originally Posted by Hib Halverson

I've written a lot of stories. Which one are you asking about?

One of the stories about early preproduction ZR-1s?

[Dynomite]

Originally Posted by Hib Halverson

I've written a lot of stories. Which one are you asking about?

Not to mention your superbly written Technical Articles like FX3 Selective Rid Control as are listed in -Solutions-

That might even be a photo of Barney and Hib in the Technical Article

[Z51JEFF]

Years ago before the cars release I remember reading one of the smaller Corvette publication and there was a story on The King of the Hill and there was a shot of a silver car that has one of the headlights stuck halfway open. I think it was called Corvette Enthusiast.

[Hib Halverson]

Originally Posted by Z51JEFF

One of the stories about early preproduction ZR-1s?

Have to go back and look at that stuff. Too long ago to remember.

Originally Posted by Z51JEFF

Years ago before the cars release I remember reading one of the smaller Corvette publication and there was a story on The King of the Hill and there was a shot of a silver car that has one of the headlights stuck halfway open. I think it was called Corvette Enthusiast.

Do you know what issue of "Corvette Enthusiast" that might be? I worked for them from the late 00s until the mag was killed a couple years ago.

[Hib Halverson]

Originally Posted by Dynomite

(snip)

That might even be a photo of Barney and Hib in the Technical Article

Actually, that image was Barney in "rally trim" for an article in Vette Magazine's old "Purple Project" series. It was shot about 15 years ago up in the mountains north of L.A. on CA SR2 aka "Angeles Crest Highway".

I'm driving and my long-time Navigator, Gary Peterson, is shotgun. The stuff on the dash is a rally computer/clock device.

There's an interesting backstory to that photo. It's actually a set-up shot because I wrote the Purple Project article which included that image sometime after the rally we ran in the car which was the 2000 Starlite. The rally was covered in the article but we didn't have a camera on the rally, so we had to put all the rally stuff back on the car, take it up the Crest and do an action shot. Starlite 00 actually never ran over CA SR2.

Barney on Angeles Crest, those were some good old days.
(sigh)
Back when I lived in the greater L.A. area, I used both Angeles Crest and the old Glendora Mountain Road for road testing cars for magazines and for doing fast action photography for magazines.

In fact, Barney was our "back-up" car for the Starlite that year. Normally, Gary and I ran a highly-modified '65 Chevelle station wagon on the "map-type Monte Carlo" rallys we ran regularly together from the late 80s until the early 00s. In a different rally event in 1999 we broke the valve train in the motor of the Chevelle and the new motor was not ready for Startlite 00, so we used Barney. That brought us much luck because our best finish as a driver/navigator team and my second best finish as a driver came in the Purple ZR-1, not in the Chevelle we used to call the "Blue Bullet".

The "Blue Bullet" went to the scrap yard back near the end of '10. It had 308,000 miles on it and was starting to rust, so I parted it out.

My best all time "Kill Story" came in that Chevelle during a 140-mph "contest" with a BMW 5-series sedan on a back road south of I-15 near the CA/NV border. This was on one of the Starlites...might have been the 1997 or '98 event. One of these days, I need to find that story and post it.

Executive Summary, a BMW driver gave birth to kittens after we not only drafted then passed him, but accelerated away.