Finding a New Road, Part 5: The Michigan NCRS Chapter Meet

Hello everyone, welcome back to our Finding a New Road series where you occupy the passenger seat as I take a 1978 Silver Anniversary Corvette through Bloomington Gold, NCRS and MCACN judging. In our last installment I had successfully attained Bloomington Survivor, Gold, and Benchmark awards. Now, how will it do under the scrutiny of National Corvette Restorer Society (NCRS) judges?

Catch up on our previous episodes here:
Part 1: Here We Go Again
Part 2: Ready for the Road?
Part 3: Showtime at Bloomington Gold
Part 4: Betting on Benchmark
Part 5: The Michigan NCRS Chapter Meet
Part 6: In Search of Diamonds and Gold at MCACN

The Michigan NCRS Chapter Meet took place just 2 weeks after Bloomington Gold. Typically, after any judging event I like to go over the scoring sheets again to see if there’s anything I’d change or improve before the next event. In this case, Bloomington Gold had gone so well I quite literally had nothing to do. The only prep was 20-mile boondoggle to fill up the gas tank followed by quick bath. I had taken the car to Bloomington on an open trailer, so it badly needed 400 miles worth of bugs a road grime removed.

With the car in tip-top shape all I had to do was count down the days to the meet. Since the NCRS gives bonus points for driving your car to events, my plan was to enjoy a nice 100-mile round trip jaunt to Dearborn, MI and back. As setup day approached, the weatherman was indicating 2 soggy days coinciding with our event. Normally I would have just driven in the rain, but I’ve simply got too many hours invested getting the underside of this one getting it clean and ready for the judges. I was going to need an enclosed trailer. So, a couple days before the meet, I sought out any fellow chapter members who may have a trailer spot going my way. Luckily, I received a quick response and was able to score a last-minute trailer ride to the event. I’m sharing this here because it shows just one more aspect of our hobby – the people. For no money and no expectations of compensation, a fellow enthusiast picked up my car at my front door, transported it to the show, and even brought it home. That’s what our hobby is all about. Thanks again, Tom!

The chapter meet was a 2-day event. Show setup and operations judging were on Friday and all other judging and the awards ceremony took place Saturday. An early afternoon break in the Friday rain provided the perfect opportunity to extract the car from the trailer and run through everything with the Ops judges. In NCRS land each operation line item is worth 25 points. If something doesn’t work properly, all 25 points are gone in most cases. Having aced the operations exam at Bloomington, this should be easy. And it was. Once again, the car sailed right through with no deductions. I even got my 10 bonus points for having a fire extinguisher, battery cutoff, and a NCRS sticker on the car. From here I was escorted into the building to my parking spot for the next day.

NCRS judging is broken down into 5 categories: Operations, Mechanical (engine), Exterior, Interior, and Chassis. Here, the 2-person judging teams arrive one-by-one evaluating their respective areas. Each section can take 30-45 minutes or so. In the Michigan chapter, we’re fortunate to have many high level and heavily experienced NCRS judges and even some Hall of Famers as members. In that sense, a Michigan chapter meet can be a lot like a Regional NCRS meet given the collective tribal knowledge on hand.

Every car starts with 4,500 points. Each line item is graded on originality/correctness as well as condition. From there points are deducted based on how far the given item deviates from the standard of a Corvette fresh from the assembly plant. Here points can be deducted in 1-2 (or more) point increments. Score 94% or higher and you receive a coveted Top Flight award. As I mentioned earlier, owners can score bonus points for driving their Corvette to the meet and also having a few safety items present in their car.

Going into Saturday’s judging events I was pretty confident I’d be coming home with another blue Top Flight ribbon. Even with that confidence you still have a little voice in your head chirping away about what you may have missed or some random item that broke, shifted, or moved bouncing around in the trailer.

Saturday activities got underway quickly around 8:30am. The Mechanical and Chassis judges were my first guests of the day. As they did their thing, I did my usual thing too. I just hung out in the background and snooped over their shoulders as they worked their way down the scoring sheets. My reconnaissance indicated things were going quite well as I suspected it would. No real surprises here other than the keen chassis judges who caught my incorrect starter this time. Of course, I knew it was there so no shocker to me and their deducts were fair. Again, I received some great feedback and compliments on how well the car presented. The final scoring here was a generous 637 points out of 646 possible on chassis and 1,087 out of 1,120 on mechanical. Just like Bloomington, I thought the judges were quite generous and could have taken more points off for condition. Or maybe I’m just overly critical of my own car? Nah, couldn’t be that.

Next up the exterior team arrived and did their detailed inspection of all 4 sides of the car. As they made their way around the car, I noted things were continuing to go well. When they were done, the car had scored 1,163 out of 1,179 points. So far, scoring was pacing far ahead of my expectations. While waiting for the interior team I began running the math in my head just to see how high this thing could possibly score.

The interior is probably this car’s best feature. Other than some aging and light discoloration, the interior is in great shape, and I was confident it would score well. The interior team was the last to arrive and quietly went about their business. There wasn’t a lot of conversation which is typically a good thing. That’s usually a sign that they are having to look really hard for a reason to deduct points. In the end, the interior scored very well only losing 15 of the 805 possible points. Over half of those points came from the replacement Delco battery and the 9-point standard deduction that comes with it.

Once all 5 sections had been tallied, my final score came out to 98.6% which is much higher than expected. It’s also the highest this car has ever scored in any judging. After Bloomington I knew it would score well, just not as well as it actually did. That 98.6% was about 1.5% higher than Bloomington. With that, I was curious how that NCRS-to-Bloomington comparison looked versus last time I went through this process. Back then, the old blue car scored about 95.5% at Bloomington and 96.6% at NCRS.

All that remained now was the awards ceremony which began about 3pm. After some door prizes were given away, the judging awards were handed out from oldest model year to newest. When my name was called, I walked up to receive my blue Top Flight ribbon.

So where does this road go now? After a 7ish week pause we’ll be off to my favorite show of the year, the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals in Chicago on the weekend before Thanksgiving. There I’ll be going for a Concourse Gold award which brings a Triple Diamond award along with it. Let’s see if I can add a couple more trophies to the mantle before the end of the year. Until then I’ve joined the 1978-1979 judging guide revision team to help get that valuable resource up to current standards.

Thanks for reading and see you in November.

Source:
Photos by Steve Burns

Related:
Part 1: Here We Go Again
Part 2: Ready for the Road?
Part 3: Showtime at Bloomington Gold
Part 4: Betting on Benchmark
Part 5: The Michigan NCRS Chapter Meet
Part 6: In Search of Diamonds and Gold at MCACN

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