How did Jimmy first get his Corvette? Jimmy said the previous owner was driving it at a high rate of speed around a sweeping turn and T-boned the local sheriff, who was backing out of his own driveway. The owner fled the scene on foot, and the car was impounded. Jimmy either came upon the scene or heard about it, and decided he was going to own the car. He spent every day after high school searching the weeds around the scene of the crash for little pieces of fiberglass, which were everywhere. Jimmy talked to the sheriff, who said since the owner never claimed the car, by law it had to go up for auction. The auction had to be advertised by posting notices in several public places. Jimmy volunteered to do the posting. He dutifully put up the posters in the required places around town, however, somebody immediately followed the exact same route and took them back down. The letter of the law had been met, and Jimmy was the only one at the auction. The Corvette was his for a hundred bucks.

   Elk hunting

   Various Thralls with Corvette and their trophies in 1973

Jimmy converted the car to four wheel drive using Scout parts, and won many rallies, gymkhanas, and mud races. Occasionally he'd go to a high-falutin' Corvettes-only pavement meet where the well-dressed "competitors" with their shiny 2WD Corvettes would sneer at Jimmy's creation. They were even more unhappy when he won. One group even banned him from their event.

   Lookingglass rally

Jimmy said once when he was moving, he threw away a 55-gallon drum full of trophies he had won.

Around 1979, Chad "Bear" Rogers recounted how he went for a ride in Jimmy's Corvette. He described it as loud and violent. As impressive as the noise and G-loads were, the numerous empty Coke bottles crashing around inside made quite an earful and eyeful too.

   April 1983

   Long distance off-road race

   In the newspaper

Jimmy's off-road number 422 was later changed to 456 so Jimmy could paint a small "x" between the 4 and the 56, indicating the number of wheels driven and the year.

In the mid-eighties, Jimmy trailered his Corvette to a small shop next to Rolla Vollstedt's shop in Portland, Oregon from Reno, where it had been sitting outside a while after being in a S.C.O.R.E. off-road race or two in the Nevada desert. It needed lots of cleaning. Jimmy fixed it up, upgraded a few items, and prepped an even stronger small-block Chevy for it. Roy Gardner just had to look under the relatively smooth front bodywork, and sure enough, most of the front end was made up of pieces of fiberglass 3 or 4 inches square, all glued back together.

When the car was ready, Jimmy told Roy, "Jump in, and we'll go fill it up with gas at the station around the corner". Roy climbed in through the cage, put on the 5-point harness in the co-driver's seat, and Jimmy drove on the public paved streets to the gas station. However, after filling up, he didn't go directly back to the shop. He went the long way around, and gave it a fair amount of throttle on the straight, hilly road north of the shop. Suddenly, over the next rise ahead of them, appeared an oncoming police car. Jimmy instantly shifted into high gear and feathered the throttle to minimize the noise from the USDF spark arrestors, the only "mufflers" the car had. A ticket was a certainty. To Jimmy and Roy's amazement, the officer motored by staring straight ahead, never even glancing at the 6-foot tall white Monster-Vette thumping by at somewhat over the speed limit. He never turned around, and they could only imagine what was going on in the policeman's head. Maybe he was muttering to himself, "I've had a rough day already, and I DON"T need THIS!"

The Corvette's first big outing after the overhaul was at a big patch of sand dunes in central Oregon. Jimmy took along his friend Diane and Roy Gardner. With its relatively small tires and high weight, skillful driving was required to keep the car from burying itself in the deep sand. The only time it got stuck was when an inattentive 3-wheel ATV driver turned in front of Jimmy without looking or listening and he had to brake hard to a complete stop.

Jimmy offered Roy a turn at driving, and he found the whole car to be very responsive. He noted that even though Jimmy had cut out the port dividers from the cylinder heads and intake manifold for more horsepower, the throttle response at low RPM was more than adequate. The power level was such that he never had to give it more than about 1/3 throttle on the sand. It was fun to use the position of the floor shifter as a limit on the amount of torque requested, because the engine had a history of tearing its motor mounts in two, and once again the rubber had separated and the engine was trying to leave the car. Roy made the rookie mistake of getting out of the throttle when the car went over a 1 1/2 foot dropoff, and the Corvette landed too hard on its left front, bending the wheel, the leaf spring, and breaking off the brake line. Repairs were made that evening back at camp.

The next day, Jimmy was having fun blasting up sand dunes and coasting over the top. He misjudged the height of one dune, and the Corvette went up in the air, 5 or 10 feet past the top of the dune, and landed hard 30 feet down the other side, rolling to a stop. Jimmy and Roy were well strapped in and unconcerned. Jimmy cranked the engine to restart it, since the Holley carburetor, not designed for aerobatics, had sloshed enough fuel into the engine to kill it, NASCAR-style. The Chevy finally lit up, but when he put it in gear and let out the clutch, all they got was grinding noises and the car wouldn't even go downhill. He shut it off, and they got out to see what had happened. There was a trail of 90 weight down the dune and a puddle under the middle of the car. The front driveshaft, which Jimmy had made out of .120 wall because of earlier strength problems, had bottomed out on the bellhousing when the car landed, and levered the transfer case off the back of the transmission! A casting was broken, and it was time to look for a tow.

Jimmy and Roy hoofed it back toward camp, and at the edge of the dunes came across a full-size pickup with really big tires. Jimmy asked, "Does it go good in the sand?" The young owner said yes, and agreed to lend a hand. They piled in the back, and the first shallow dune the truck encountered, it bounced to a wheel-hopping stop. Obviously, the truck was bone stock except for the tires and lift kit. The truck retreated in shame, and Jimmy & Roy looked for a more serious contender. They came across a pair of old-school jeeps from a jeep club. Jimmy said to Roy, "We're in luck, these are the type of guys who were on the dunes long before buggies, ATVs, and bikes." Jimmy enlisted the 2 gentlemen's aid, and one of the jeeps did the whole job in competent fashion, the driver even offering to pull the heavier Corvette up onto its trailer. Jimmy said thanks, he'd use the trailer's winch, and handshakes & beers & stories were passed around.

Back at the shop in Portland, to move the CG back for better handling on the jumps, Jimmy pondered whether to move the engine to the rear or move the front axle forward, and decided on the latter.

   In the shop in Reno

Years later, the Corvette was in Gene and Jimmy's shop in Reno, and Jimmy and John Engfer from the AAR rag shop spent several weekends making a 3-piece mold for a new, longer front bodywork shell.