Most vintage car enthusiasts fell in love with a certain make or model because they were exposed to it at an early age. They grew up in a Chevrolet, Chrysler, or Ford family, or perhaps an older sibling, cousin, or neighbor turned them on to a specific car. Not so with Teddy Freund, current caretaker of the gorgeous 1960 Corvette featured here. When he was a wee lad running around in knickers and pulling little girls’ pony tails in Islip, New York, a pal’s dad owned a bustling auto-repair shop. Freund and his friend spent many joyous hours messing around with a wide variety of older vehicles that were lying around the shop and its storage yard.
“There were always derelict cars around,” Freund recalls, “so my friend and I spent a lot of time trying to get this one or that one running again. Sometimes we succeeded, sometimes we didn’t, but we always had a lot of fun, we always learned something new, and I developed an appreciation for all kinds of cars.”
After obtaining his driver’s license, Freund bought his first car, a well-used 1940 Ford sporting a Flathead V-8. As an unrepentant hot rodder and avid drag racer, he was constantly tinkering to make the car faster. “I got as far as I could with the old Flathead, and then switched to a 331-cubic-inch Chrysler engine,” he says with a smile. “I had to fabricate an adapter plate to mate the engine to the transmission, and had to make mount brackets and a few other things, so it was another learning experience. That was the first of the legendary Hemi engines, and it made the car very fast.”
A 1955 Pontiac came next, and Freund quickly discovered that its transmission was the weak link. After breaking several of them at Westhampton Dragway, he installed a stout three-speed manual gearbox sourced from an old LaSalle, and that held up much better. At the same time he was racing the Pontiac, a couple of ’55 Chevys came and went.
All of the car-related fun, including the drag racing, came to an end when Freund got married. “After marriage came a house and children,” he explains. “I worked constantly to buy a house and then spent a lot of time and money creating a business. I got into motorcycles a little bit, but for a long time the car hobby was put on the back burner…I went almost 40 years without any real involvement in [it].”
That changed in a big way following a casual decision to check out a local car show in Florida. “My wife Helen and I bought a place in Lakeland,” Freund tells us, “and one day when we were down there we were looking for something to do. We learned about a huge local car show and thought, ‘Let’s check it out.’”
Surrounding himself with an incredible variety of collectible cars instantly rekindled the flame for Freund, and he ended up purchasing a hot-rodded ’37 Chevy. Over the following few years he bought numerous street rods. “I wasn’t looking for anything specific,” he explains, “but if something caught my eye, I’d buy it.”
That lack of focus vanished about 25 years ago, owing entirely to a chance encounter with a stunning ’56 Corvette. “I went to a car auction at the FTL War Memorial in Fort Lauderdale,” recounts Freund. “A guy had a big tent with five or six old Corvettes on display, and I instantly fell in love with a Venetian Red ’56. I returned the next day with Helen and bought that Corvette.”
Freund didn’t have a garage spot for the ’56 Vette, but he made friends with the dealer selling the car and the bloke agreed to make space in his facility for it. That led to Freund spending a great deal of time at the dealership, which was a sprawling, action-packed place. “It was really a happening scene,” he recalls, “and the more time I spent there, the more I learned. I ended up buying and selling a lot of Corvettes.
“I really enjoy detailing cars, so I was there all the time detailing my cars,” he continues. “In this same time frame I got very involved with Corvette shows and swap meets all over the country. The more I traveled, the more I saw, and the more people I met, and the more I learned.”
It was at the giant Corvette show in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where Freund crossed paths with our highly unusual feature car. He and a buddy were scrambling around looking at parts and cars when a this ’60 caught his eye. “The guys brought it to the show to sell, and we happened to be in the right place at the right time when they were driving it up to the car-corral area. My friend and I spotted it right away because of the color, which really stood out. There were no other cars there painted that color.”
After quickly examining the car and speaking with the gentlemen who’d brought it to the show, Freund learned that it was a high-horsepower factory Fuelie and was in fact one of only 140 Corvettes painted Cascade Green in 1960. This extremely unusual one-year-only hue captivated him, but of course he wasn’t the only potential buyer attracted to it. “Loads of people were swarming around it,” he recalls, “so I knew I couldn’t hesitate if I wanted the car.”
Besides the highly desirable 290-horsepower fuel-injected engine and rarely seen color, another compelling factor was the car’s originality. It still retained its factory-installed engine and most of its original underhood components. And, having never been hit, it retained all of its original body panels. The final lure was the car’s title: when Freund encountered it at Carlisle in 2015, it was still titled to its very first owner.
“As usual,” he recalls with a chuckle, “I wasn’t at Carlisle specifically to buy another Corvette, but this car was so interesting that it caught my attention. I always say that when a car hits you—I mean when it really hits you—don’t let it get away. So I made a deal and bought it.”
In keeping with tradition, Freund rolled up his sleeves and went to work when he got the car home. It ran and drove OK, but he knew from experience that it could be much better. He also knew that he could elevate the car’s cosmetics to a much higher level. It wasn’t long before had the engine and most of the underhood components out of the car. The fuel-injection system was sent out to a specialist who rebuilt and tuned it to perfection. Freund then thoroughly cleaned and restored the appearance of the engine assembly and everything else under the hood.
After the engine was back in the car, Freund drove it quite a lot before deciding to restore the front end. He removed the front chassis cross-member, complete with all of the steering and suspension pieces that attach to it. He then cleaned and stripped each component to bare metal and refinished them to their correct, factory appearance with powder coating or paint. After another year of joy-filled driving, he did the same thing with the entire rear-axle setup, removing it from the car, disassembling each part, and refinishing everything to its assembly-line look.
Though all along the way Freund restored everything to exact factory specifications, he has never been afraid to drive the car. It’s a common sight at cruise nights and Cars-and-Coffee gatherings all around Long Island, and he even drove it to an NCRS meet in Rhode Island, albeit shortening his driving distance by taking a ferry across the Long Island Sound to the Connecticut shore.
Because of the car’s rarity, Freund invested the time and effort to dig a little bit deeper into its history. He calculates that of the 140 Cascade Green Corvettes produced in 1960, 65 were built with white coves, which was an extra-cost option. The remaining 75, including our feature car, left the St. Louis assembly plant with green coves. Freund believes that only one of the all-green examples was equipped with a high-horsepower fuel-injected engine, making his car truly one-of-a-kind.
Freund’s research also revealed that the car was sold new in Virginia, and its original owner was a prolific street racer in the 1960s. Fortunately, he was a good driver and never so much as scuffed the paint. Equally fortuitous, he removed the car’s original 283-ci engine as soon as he could get his hands on a new-for-1962 327-ci powerplant. In the years that followed he put a wide variety of different engines in the car, but he always held on to the original fuel-injected 283.
The car was driven very little in the 1970s and ’80s, which helped keep its mileage relatively low. In 1990 the first owner’s son decided to perform some restoration work, and that’s when the original engine went back in.
Looking ahead, Freund plans to keep doing what he’s been doing since sealing the deal to buy this rare C1 back in 2015. That is, he’ll continue to improve the areas that are less than perfect, and do whatever’s necessary maintain the areas that are. And of course, he’ll continue to drive it on a regular basis because doing so brings him so much happiness.
