C4 Corvette Dressed as a Chitwood Thrill Car is Transformed into a Museum Sign

Sep 30, 2026

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C4 Corvette Dressed as a Chitwood Thrill Car Turned Into a Museum Sign

Photo Credits: Dan Hutchings

An old Corvette that once looked destined for the junkyard has found an unusual new purpose — high above the front yard of the nation’s largest Auto Thrill Show Museum in Bloomfield, Iowa.

Museum owner Dan Hutchings recently completed a two-year project that turned the battered C4 Corvette into a replica Joey Chitwood Thrill Show car mounted atop a massive roadside sign.

The idea came unexpectedly.

Hutchings was delivering parts to a customer when he spotted an old Corvette that was “a mess.” The owner offered it to him at noon, and three hours later, the car was delivered.

That left Hutchings with the problem of explaining another junk-car purchase to his wife, Jane.

“About halfway to the house, it just hit me,” Hutchings recalled. “I’m gonna make a sign out of it for the museum.”

His wife liked the idea — then raised the stakes by asking whether he could make the Corvette turn atop the sign.

Hutchings wasn’t ready to promise that, but he was confident he could turn the car into a landmark.

First, the Corvette had to lose a lot of weight. Hutchings wanted nothing left but the body shell, making it easier to lift and reducing wind resistance once the car was high in the air.

He advertised the Corvette’s mechanical components and other parts on Facebook Marketplace, offering everything but the body to someone willing to strip the car and return the shell. A man from Fort Dodge took the deal, with his two high-school-age sons dismantling the Corvette as a summer project. The family planned to use some of the components in other vehicles.

That fall, the empty Corvette body returned to Hutchings and was placed on jack stands outside his D.C. Diesel shop.

The bigger challenge was figuring out how to safely put it in the air.

Hutchings found heavy-wall 10-inch square tubing in western Iowa for about one-fourth what new steel would have cost. An Amish welder near Drakesville fabricated the framework, while Bruce Wortmann helped Hutchings design the structure and determine how the Corvette would be supported.

The posts extend nine feet into the ground in three-foot-diameter holes, with about 2½ yards of concrete securing each one, “so I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere,” Hutchings said.

The two men then fabricated supports for the Corvette, tied them together with steel tubing and installed the structure beneath the stripped body. Decals transformed the old Corvette into a tribute to the cars used in Joey Chitwood’s famous automotive thrill shows.

On Sept. 23, Hutchings, Wortmann and Rick Rysdam used a telehandler to carefully raise the Corvette onto its new perch.

“It was probably a little dangerous,” Hutchings admitted, but the group worked slowly until everything lined up.

Then came the moment of truth.

“We just had to tweak it a little bit to get it square and then started letting it down and kerplunk!” Hutchings said. “I was so relieved.”

The Corvette didn’t take long to become a local attraction.

Hutchings said people were stopping to photograph it within three hours of its installation.

The unusual display is particularly appropriate because the museum celebrates the history of automotive thrill shows, an interest Hutchings has had since childhood. Its collection includes five Chitwood cars, along with posters and other memorabilia accumulated over decades.

So while this particular Corvette may never run again, it has landed a starring role of its own.

Instead of disappearing into a salvage yard, the once-rough Corvette now sits high above the museum — serving as a larger-than-life reminder of the daredevil automotive shows Hutchings has spent years preserving.

Source:
Dan Hutchings / Facebook and

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