GALLERY: Corvette enthusiast congregate in Joplin for national convention
JOPLIN, Mo. — It’s been said that you can’t buy happiness. But owners of a particular brand of car might disagree – and there are a lot of them in Joplin this week.
To several car enthusiasts, nothing looks or sounds quite like a corvette. A hundred fifty of the high octane machines and the people who swear by them have been in Joplin this week, some since Monday, as part of the first ever national corvette convention to be hosted in and by the Four State Corvette Club based in Joplin.
A member of which is Larry Lankford of Neosho.
“They’ll go to different places to eat and they’ll shop at different places, I think it will bring a lot of revenue to to the town,” said Lankford.
“The number of hotel nights is having a great impact, they’re over in the hotel district in the evening time doing things, they were at Downstream last night so there’s an impact in the regional market as well, hitting all the sites on Route 66,” said Patrick Tuttle, Director, Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“They’ve done a great job, they really have, the community supported it, the hotels, the restaurants we’ve been to, the people are very nice to us, they’re very helpful, yeah, terrific,” said Larry Boyd, St. Louis Corvette Club.
Fred Dugach came all the way from Florida for the event. He watched as his corvette was being built, drove it off the assembly line and later had it’s valve cover signed by the engineers that designed it.
“They lower the car down and then you get to start it up for the first time and you get to drive it off and it’s such a heart felt experience you just can’t believe it, it’s just fantastic, I said ok folks you got to sign these, you got the Mona Lisa, now you have to put the signatures on it,” said Dugach.
How cool is it to be in this organization?
“Well, it you like to go out and eat and drive your car, you’ll have fun, cause we like to go out and eat and we like to drive,” said Lankford.
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