My friends thought I was crazy," laughs New Jerseyite Paul Tsakos. Like many Corvette diehards, Tsakos had his heart set on a very specific model, but that wasn't the reason behind his friends' incredulity. "I wanted a 1969 big-block convertible with an automatic," he beams. "I've just always liked automatics. When I started looking, I wasn't even sure if such a thing existed." Despite his unusual—at least when it comes to vintage Corvettes—transmission preference, Tsakos remained dedicated to his quest, though even he was amazed at where his search would wind up.
Tsakos' first Corvette memory comes from when he was eight or nine years old. "I was sitting on the stoop in front of our house with my cousins, and this guy pulls up in a green '61 or '62," he recalls. "He just started doing this huge burnout, and we were just in awe." Despite this dramatic solid-axle introduction, and even bigger impression would be made a few years later when he spotted a new C3 outside P.S. 37 in Jersey City. "Someone told me it was a Corvette, and I'm thinking, I thought that other green car was a Corvette! But I just fell in love with it."
Many years later, Tsakos began his search for the exclusive 1969 big-block automatic convertible—to add even more difficulty to his search, he limited himself to factory-correct examples. "I loved the '69 for a couple of reasons," Tsakos explains. "First, it was the one that caught my eye when I was a kid. I also liked the fact that '69 was the only year with sidepipes. I thought that a '69 with pipes would be the ultimate! Still, I needed the motor to be original—the car was also an investment."
After spreading the word about his perfect C3, Tsakos got a lead from a friend. "My buddy found a '69 convertible with a big-block and an automatic online," he recalls. "He kept the number for me. After everybody had said I would never find one, I couldn't believe the news. I told him, 'You've got to be kidding me!" Despite this stroke of luck, Tsakos' good fortune would only go so far. "There was one catch," he chuckles. "The car was on Maui, Hawaii."
Though the car was about as far away as it could get while still remaining in the same country, Tsakos remained optimistic. "When you're in that mode where you really want something, there are no barriers. You just want to climb that mountain and get over to the other side. Of course, there are a lot of things to think about. It's far away, and you don't really know what you're buying. So I really rolled the dice."

The owner was a Hawaiian native, a fireman by the name of Carlton Long. "He actually didn't know that much about the car," says Tsakos. "He said, 'Listen, I was young, and I bought the car from a guy [on the mainland]. I drove it for maybe a year or two, then I started a family, and I just parked it.' I started asking him detailed questions about the engine pad, and he said that he'd be willing to look if I told him where, but he really didn't know anything."
Concerned about possible trickery, Tsakos weighed his options. "I was afraid, to be honest. Maybe he was playing a game with me, pretending not to know. So I enlisted some people to look at the car for me. First, I sent a guy down from the local Chevy dealer, but he really didn't know what to look for either. I told him to take a picture of the engine pad, and to stick his finger in certain areas to see if there was rust." This remote process, says Tsakos, "was very time-consuming and very aggravating." Still unsatisfied after consulting the Chevy dealer, Tsakos contacted a firm specializing in home appraisals on a neighboring Hawaiian island. "Their price was astronomical, and they still couldn't tell me if the car was the real thing."