By Richard C. Gross
For The New Mexican
You may have seen an older dude, with a white ponytail sticking out behind a ballcap, tooling around town in a 1957 Corvette with the top down, summer or winter. That would be Gene Beck. He’s 85. He bought the car new 51 years ago.
“I drive it all the time,” he said. “I always keep the top down, unless it rains. It’s got a good heater. I’ve got a warm jacket, and the heater keeps my feet warm.”
Using the orange-and-pale-yellow convertible as a daily driver might be why it’s on its sixth engine — the other five engines just plain wore out. He and a friend installed the current engine, a 350-cubic-inch Chevrolet V-8 rated at 450 horses, two years ago, modding it further when they put it in.
Beck has no idea how many miles he’s driven his ‘Vette. But swapping engines is no problem for Beck, a mechanical engineer. The Navy trained him during World War II to keep diesel ship engines running, and he served aboard an LST — Landing Ship, Tank — that participated in the invasion of four Japanese-held South Pacific islands.
The newest engine in his Corvette, fueled through a four-barrel carburetor, is shifted by a Muncie four-speed manual transmission that General Motors bolted to most performance engines from 1963 to 1974. Beck dropped it in about 35 years ago in place of the original three-speed.
That’s why Beck’s vanity license plate says “G-Force.”
And the exhaust note growls like that of a ’60s muscle car, as if the Force is with his little baby.
“I’ve never opened it up, but it’ll probably go 130 miles an hour,” he said. “But I don’t even get it out of first gear until 60 miles an hour, and that’s at 6,000 rpm. It probably would do 120 miles an hour in second.”
Anyone in Santa Fe ever challenge him at a traffic light?
“Once in a while,” he replied. “If they do, they’d better be ready for a race.”
Chevrolet built 6,339 Corvettes in 1957, the fourth year of production for the iconic American sports car. The base engine was a 283-cubic-inch V-8 that put out 220 horsepower. Beck’s car originally was what Chevy dubbed Polo White, the only color choice when the Corvette was introduced in 1953.
Beck paid about $4,000 for his, and he says it’s worth about $140,000 today, far more than the 1988 Corvette he bought new on a whim, and has 100,000 miles on the odometer but mostly sits in the garage now.
He said of the ‘57, “I wouldn’t trade it for a new one for anything. I’ve had it too long for that now.”
Beck was born in Topeka, Kan., raised in Anaheim, Calif., and moved to Santa Fe in 1982, when he and his wife of 35 years, Kay, bought a house on Old Santa Fe Trail, where they still live.
What gave Beck the time and ability to cruise around and “goof off” was the money he received from what perhaps was his biggest professional achievement — an invention. He developed a flavor extract embedded in processed foods — like the mint globule in Certs — and the machinery used to manufacture it that’s now used worldwide.
“I wouldn’t say I got wealthy, but I made some money,” Beck said. “I haven’t worked since 1969.”
He originally was a Ford guy. His first car was a 1930 Model A, when he was 15 and still in high school. He bought it for $125 when he was earning 15 cents an hour picking rotten oranges out of an assembly line. Ford built 4.8 million Model A’s, successor to the Model T, between 1927 and 1931.
“First thing I did was put overhead valves on it and dual carburetors, Stromberg 97s,” he grinned. The Stromberg 97 perhaps is the most famous of all hot-rod carbs. “I hopped it up, and it went like hell. It might go 100; it was pretty fast.”
Next came a 1937 Ford V-8 coupe, which Beck also reworked to “go like hell,” then the war years and then, in 1946, a new Chevrolet with a straight six-cylinder and three-on-the-tree stick that cost him $1,460. Then the Corvette in ‘57.
Any plans to sell it?
“I’ll keep it until I kick the bucket,” Beck replied. “I told my wife to bury me in it.”
Richard C. Gross is a Santa Fe-based writer and editor. E-mail drive@sfnewmexican.com.
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