the Purple People Eaters... I didn't know they were a Nickey Chevrolet thing

in the late 1950s, they belonged to Nickey Chevrolet of Chicago and in a stroke of marketing genius, they were painted metallic purple and named after the hit novelty song “The Purple People Eater”

The Purple People Eater you see here was the third and final car to wear the eye-catching color, it’s also the car that won the 1959 SCCA B-Production Championship with the talented combination of driver Jim Jeffords and mechanic Ronnie Kaplan.

But in 1974 at the Carlisle swap meet friends Ken Heckert and Chip Miller pooled their leftover money and bought the car for the bargained-down price of just $800.

The two men autocrossed the Corvette for a little while and it eventually found its way into the inglorious position of being the lunch table in an body shop for 14 years – before a keen eyed patron identified the car as the iconic 1959 Championship winning Purple People Eater.

http://silodrome.com/chevrolet-corvette-purple-people-eater/