Brent Jarvis's 1965 Chevy Corvette's - Maxed Out !!

One’s for show but will go,... and the other is all for go.For decades, HOT ROD has preached the sermon get out and drive your junk and has created several events to promote that agenda. While we can totally respect AMBR- and Ridler-level show cars and the amount of time, talent, and money that go into them, how many of us can really relate to that kind of detail without the enjoyment of sliding behind the wheel, slamming open the butterflies, and spraying an obscene quantity of rubber on the quarter-panels?

Brent Jarvis, owner of Performance Restorations in Mundelein, Illinois,is one of us. A lifetime addiction to speed led him initially down the dragstrip as one of the early competitors in HOT ROD’s Fastest Street Car Shootout in the mid-’90s. We featured his very cool, low-8-second, Pro Street ’59 Corvette back in the Apr. ’96 issue after having seen and photographed the car at one of the FSCs at Memphis Motorsports Park. (He still owns that car, and it’s in the low 7s today.) His quote to us back then was, If it looks fast, it better be fast. A few years ago he contacted us and said he was building another Vette, this one a midyear model, and he asked if we wanted to feature it. It looked all the part of a full-on show car, but remembering that statement, we couldn’t resist taunting him: Sure, we’ll feature the car, but only if you’ll put it on a track and drive it in anger.

That car had killer suspension and a ton of power, but like so many of the showy Pro Touring cars back then, we doubted it would perform to the level of its equipment. We were wrong. Brent not only took us up on the dare but he also beat on the car for a full day on a road course. And it was fast. The testdriver, GM engineer and Pro Touring hero Mark Stielow, was even impressed at its out-of-the-box goodness.



When Brent called again a few months ago and told us about two more Corvettes he was doing, set up for the road course, with one more show than race but both fully capable of either, we had to see them. The red car (named Maxed Out) was found on RacingJunk.com as an abandoned road race car with fender flares and all. Brent picked it up to build another track car, but after going through the whole Performance Restoration redo, the car looked so good he decided to chrome it up and take it to some indoor shows. All the parts are there to cut some serious lap times, but the summer of 2010 saw the car hit the ISCA circuit. However, Brent assures us that once the trophies are collected (many of which already have been), the car gets sticky tires and will see track time. It has already lost its road course virginity, though not in a hard-core way; while being displayed in the House of Kolors booth at the ’10 SEMA show, it was chosen to compete in the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational the Saturday after the show. Brent drove the ’65 on the mandatory 60ish-mile cruise, but having never been on Pahrump, Nevada’s Spring Mountain Motorsports track before and with the car not totally sorted out for that kind of action, he took it pretty easy. Knowing his history and attitude toward cars, though, we have no doubt this pretty piece will see plenty of track time.

Once the direction changed on the red car, the blue car became the hard-core road racer. Brent bought it as a Pro Touring street car but got rid of the street part of it. This Vette still has some custom touches and excellent attention to detail, but it sees door-to-door action in an outlaw vintage racing class all summer long. It has even won a race. It is street legal, but Brent has it set up to be competitive, so it doesn’t see many road miles now.

Both cars have big-blocks and stick transmissions, as every Corvette should, and both are also fully ’caged and suspended to be legal, safe, and fast on the road course. The blue car has the least radical parts, since Brent races it on the vintage racing circuit where rules limit what you can do. The red car is more radical, makes 200 more horsepower, and has more chrome and detailing than 99 percent of the angel-hair parkers you’ve ever seen. The underside is just as clean, which should make any potential off-track situation a little bit of a nervous affair for Brent.

There is plenty of room for show-only hot rods in the hot rodding universe there always has been but Brent Jarvis’ series of fast Corvettes shows how you can have your pretty cake and eat it too.