[VIDEO] One of Three 1969 Motion Manta Rays Missing for 50 Years Found in a Florida Trailer Park

It’s poetic justice that the son of the right-hand man for Joel Rosen’s Motion Corvettes back in the 1970s is restoring one of his rare custom Manta Rays.

Dennis Ferrara was a highly successful racer in the ’70s, campaigning Rosen’s 1970½ Camaro, setting records and winning championships.

A new YouTube video posted by Jerry Heasley, once a popular writer for Corvette Fever magazine, visits a south Florida shop run by Dennis’ son, Greg, who tells how he located the Manta Ray that was featured in Cars Magazine’s Corvette Annual 1976 under the headline “The Electric Orange.”

The Manta Rays featured a tapered tail and big rear spoiler, along with round exposed headlights similar to a 240Z. Of course, they also had an upgraded engine and a custom button-tufted interior.

Greg’s friend actually had the car about a half-hour south of Tampa in a barn in a trailer park, having hauled it down from New York and held onto it for years.

Unfortunately, during that long hibernation, various critters had moved into the car, with rats even taking up habitat inside the engine.

Still, Greg was intrigued by the possibility that this might be one of the three Manta Rays built and made a trip to visit his friend and check it out. Once he had gone over the car inside and out, he reached the conclusion that it was indeed the real thing.

His dad Dennis even remembers the car sitting out in front of Motion back in the day after it was built.

“We could take it to a show” in its current condition, Greg admits, “and we’d probably get a lot of publicity from it, a lot of ink from it. You know, I’m sure someone would probably want to buy it in the condition it’s in, but the attachment that have through Motion and my father running the place, the Chevrolet end of it, I’d like to be involved in it – I’d like to have my name stay attached to it because of the history that’s involved.”

That’s why he is undertaking a complete restoration, but don’t look for the car on the auction block anytime soon. He says once he works on a car, he tends to keep it, saying “if I love it when I get it, I still love it 20 or 30 years later.”

“I still have my bicycle from when I was 14 years old,” Greg points out.

Good luck to the Ferraras and we can’t wait to see the completed car, which Heasley plans to spotlight on his YouTube channel once it’s done.

Source:
Jerry Heasley / YouTube

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