When he wasn’t in class, Scotty Sheehan spent most of his time during his formative years hanging out in his father’s shop, Scotty’s Speed & Custom. Initially an excuse to ogle the latest in performance hardware, the young gearhead eventually worked his way into the Bowling Green, Kentucky-based company’s machine shop, where he learned the finer points of engine internals and wrenching. After finishing high school, Sheehan went on to help develop go-fast parts like camshafts, fuel injection systems, and nitrous kits in Holley’s engineering department before shifting gears and joining the local fire department in 2011.
Despite the change in vocations, Sheehan’s interest in hot rodding never wavered. A self-professed GM guy, he cites his drag-prepped ’86 Camaro Z28 and big-block ’68 Corvette road racer as a few of the notable projects that he’s taken on over the years, the latter of which also saw use as a Holley development car for a time. But for Sheehan, this ‘62 Corvette build might be the most prized of them all.
“My dad bought the car back in 1973 from a seller in a neighboring city,” he explains. “On the way home, it was burning oil and popping out of gear. At that point, his intention was to put another engine in it and pair that up with a Roots-style supercharger. But life happened along the way, and the car ended up being stored in a barn, partially disassembled, up until 2019. One day he came to me and said that driving the car again was on his ‘bucket list,’ so we got to work.”
After pulling the car out of storage, the father and son team quickly assessed that the Corvette would need a full restoration, so disassembly resumed at the junior Sheehan’s shop, where they brought the car down to its bare frame. “The body needed a lot of work and there was some surface rust on the frame,” he recalls. “It had been sitting in that barn, uncovered, for quite a while. It was pretty nasty.” Once the duo had sent off the frame for powder coating, they began collecting the components they’d need for the new build.
“Early on in the resurrected version of the project, Dad just wanted to get the Corvette back on the road with LS power,” Sheehan tells us. “He was going to stick with the Rally wheels, a Muncie four-speed gearbox, stock suspension, stock rear end, and so on. But it ended up being one of those situations where the more we dug into the project, the more we realized that the original hardware just wasn’t going to cut it with modern V8 power.”
The modern V8 in question is a 6.0-liter, LS2-based mill with a BTR cam, pushrods, and valve springs, along with Hooker Blackheart full-length headers. Managed by a Holley Terminator X EFI system, Sheehan estimates that the combination to be good for about 470 horsepower.
“Holley EFI was obviously an easy choice for us,” he says. “There’s a reason why so many racers choose these systems. And the Terminator X was basically the latest and greatest stuff at that time. We didn’t need all of the features of a Dominator for this particular application, but we wanted to make sure it had the capability to grow with the build if we decide to do more upgrades down the road. So it was perfect for what we needed.” The LS is backed by a Tremec TKX five-speed manual gearbox and a Quick Performance Ford 9-inch rear end with a 3.91 gearset.
To ensure that the chassis would be able to keep up with the powertrain, the Sheehans turned to Martz Chassis for a compete revamp of the C2’s suspension systems. Up front the Corvette now boasts a rack-and-pinion steering system, along with tubular upper and lower A-arms. Martz Chassis’ four-link suspension system is installed in the rear, and adjustable coilovers from QA1 grace all four corners. Stopping power is provided by Wilwood disc brakes that hide behind the factory 18-inch alloys from a C6 Corvette ZR1, the latter of which are wrapped in Nitto 555 G2 summer tires.
“We started test-fitting a lot of it before we sent off the body for paint in the fall of 2020,” he notes. “That’s when we mocked it up with LS and everything else, and we got it back from paint about eight months later. Setting the body back on the car was probably the toughest part of the whole project; because of the amount of chrome and trim that’s on these cars, it took quite a while.”
In contrast to the car's modernized underpinnings, the restored interior of the Corvette is virtually unchanged from its factory specification aside from the clear matte finish they that used on some of the panels and an electronic tachometer conversion by Classic Instruments.
Completed in August of 2023, the Corvette fittingly made its public debut at a car show held in the parking lot of Holley Performance’s headquarters in Bowling Green. “At that point we were still shaking the car down, tying up loose ends and working out the bugs,” Sheehan says. “But by LS Fest of that year, which was just a month later, it was totally dialed in.”
As for this summer, the Sheehans have a roster of local car shows they plan to attend, along with this year’s LS Fest. Though there’s been some talk of adding forced induction to the equation further down the line, for now the father and son team is happy to finally put some miles on a car that spent roughly half a century off of the road.
“Right now it’s just about enjoying the car,” he adds. “It’s been a long time coming. There are some other projects that we’re getting started on now, too. We’ve got a ’71 Suburban that we’re about to drop an LS in. My hope is that we will be pulling the ‘62 to LS Fest with it later this year.”