[Bill Scott]

I grew up in the same area where this car come from. I worked at "Ferrante Oldsmobile" from May of 1969 to May of 1970 before joining the military, and helped crew the owners son Anthony's F-85 coupe Ultra Stock car from Vandergrift PA. Racing mainly at "Keystone Dragway" in New Alexandrea PA., where John used to race his Blue 68 L-88. The main reason I remember the blue L-88, was because it had the Black vinyl top on it. What a pretty car it was !!! It was the first time I'd seen a Vette with a vinyl top, so it always stuck in my mind. It's my understanding that when John traded the L-88 in for this ZL-1, he kept the roof from the L-88 for this car. The first time I ever seen the ZL-1, John had come into the Olds dealership to visit with Anthony, (Drag racing buddies), and as someone else said in a earlier post, You could hear it comming way before you ever seen it show up. Not only was every window in the dealership vibrating so hard I thought they would all shatter, but the ground all around was also vibrating like a mini earth quake was happening. Quite the impressive car for a young Chevy fan to witness. What always amazed me though is the fact that he could drive this car on the streets of Pennsylvania. There is no way this car could ever pass the strict inspection laws in PA., unless it was 100% from the factory. It might have something to do with him being a PA. State Trooper, but nobody seemed to question it's legality at the time. Us nobodys on the other hand, were getting tickets for having Air Shocks that when inflated, threw our headlights out of line, and heaven forbid if you put a set of glass packs or any mods at all to the exhaust system, and here John was driving around with virtually unrestricted headers and side pipes that literally rocked the ground you were standing on. Hell, we couldn't even have tinted windows legally. If we did tint our windows, and got away with it, we had to scrape it all off again when the next inspection come due, or they wouldn't pass it. Back to the ZL-1, I seen John a couple time drive it on some local hill climb runs in the area too, and it did rather well on the hills and road course. This was the first time I ever heard the car in competition other than at the drags, and it was very noisy and impressive on the road course's too. It was my understanding too, that he had all the original needed paper work for the car too till he got divorced from his first wife, and that she had done something very wrong to it. thus destroying a very important piece of automobile history in the process. A woman scorned, go figure, but she deserves to have her ass kicked for this one !!! Another thing I remember about the ZL-1 was the first time I saw John run it at Keystone, he was up against his old L-88 4 speed car, and the old L-88 won by quite a good margin. I'm not sure John had the car quite set up for the drags yet as I think it was the first time he took it out. Although both cars were very nice,the ZL-1 just had a way of out classing the old L-88 in every way !!!! Thanks for the memories John !!!!