Is it the journey or the destination? That’s a reasonable question to ask when someone builds a special Corvette to precisely suit their tastes and budget. For Troy Dragovich, it was clearly the trip that defined his experience, as we will see. But first, some context.
Like many automotive stories, Dragovich’s begins with humble origins. “I started off with Ford Mustangs, but always really liked classic Chevys,” he says. “At one point I had a 1964 Chevelle that I partially restored and flipped. Some of the funds from that sale allowed me to purchase a 1984 Corvette at the 2010 Corvettes at Carlisle show. I wanted something that I could immediately drive—not really a daily driver, but something I could have fun with, and I was drawn to that car because I had never owned a Corvette.”
While Dragovich’s budget allowed him to indulge in an early fourth-gen, what he really wanted was more of a classic, like a C3. “I was never as much of a fan of the C4 body style as I was of the earlier cars, so I put it up for sale on [Facebook] Marketplace. Someone reached out to me and asked if I would be willing to do a trade. Honestly, an earlier-model chrome-bumper car would have been my preference, but I didn’t have anyone offering [one], so I went ahead and traded for the 1979 I own now.”
That trade netted him a late C3 he describes as “a little bit rough”—drivable, but in need of a cosmetic restoration. The ’79 originally rolled out of the St. Louis plant wearing Corvette Dark Blue paint with a matching interior and powered by an L82 350 under the hood. Two out of three were still there—the L82 was a distant memory, replaced by another 350-cube small-block from a ’70s C10 van.
“I replaced a lot of the interior and some of the exterior parts,” Dragovich says. “I found some nice Rallye wheels and restored them. The paint on the back half was a little rough, so I eventually pulled it into the garage, completely stripped it down, and did a repaint on the rear clip. It looked pretty nice.”
That might have been the end of the story, but Dragovich had other plans. “I went to a few car shows, places like Corvettes at Carlisle,” he says. “I had it out on the Fun Field, but the car-show scene wasn’t my thing. I didn’t get any enjoyment out of parking, sitting in my chair, and having someone come around and tell me I have a nice car.”
That dissatisfaction pushed Dragovich to explore other avenues of the hobby. “I’ve always been into all types of racing,” he notes. “I grew up in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, about an hour [south of] Watkins Glen International Speedway, so I went there to several events over the years, including some of the SVRA races. As a result, I got hooked on the older racecars.
“I saw all these beautiful C3s on the track, and you could go into the paddock and talk to the drivers and check out the cars up close,” he continues. “Afterwards, I really got the itch to have something like that, even though I didn’t have any plans to go road racing. I wanted that look and that style of car.”
That prompted Dragovich to revisit his C3 build with an eye toward “do[ing] something different with it.” That meant starting with a complete restoration of the fiberglass body, along with a repaint in the factory color. “I started block sanding and reworking the panels and fixing door gaps. That took almost two years of evenings and weekends,” he recalls.
But when the body was finally ready for paint, a happy accident manifested. “I told the paint shop that I wanted 1979 Corvette Dark Blue. The paint I got was a slightly lighter color with a bit more metallic in it, so I have no idea exactly what they sprayed. It’s not the same as the original color, but I actually like it much better, so I’m happy for their mistake.”
The look Dragovich was after was strongly influenced by the 1968 Sunray DX racing Corvettes, though he still wanted to incorporate his own custom touches. Spending so much time in the garage with the car also set the gears turning on more upgrades. And a growing interest in autocrossing dictated their direction..
“You go down that rabbit hole of improving one thing, and that leads to the next, which leads to the next,” Dragovich says. “So even though it was a replica/tribute car, I wanted to build it as more of a restomod, with the addition of some newer technology in the suspension and brakes, or in some cases, just better-performing parts.”
To address both the desired styling cues and the practical needs of autocross, the car received Rocket Racing 18×9-inch wheels wrapped in Nankang 200TW CR-S V2 275/35-18 tires. Rear suspension upgrades included a Van Steel 400-pound composite monospring and adjustable strut rods, and Viking Performance double-adjustable shocks. Up front, Dragovich installed Viking Performance Berserker double-adjustable coilovers, Delrin bushings, a Van Steel 1.625-inch sway bar and end links, and Van Steel billet tie-rod sleeves. Virtually nothing from the stock suspension was left untouched.
The demands of autocross also warranted braking improvements. At the rear Dragovich installed Wilwood four-piston calipers, along with stock 11.75-inch rotors and EBC Yellowstuff track pads. Up front he duplicated that setup but substituted six-piston Wilwoods for the four-pot units.
Through a contact at work, Dragovich struck a deal to have the car painted at the local Ford dealership’s body shop. He then set out to install all the graphics and racing stripes himself, mostly sourced from Raceline Digital Marine & Motorsports. The DX look also meant adding an L88-style hood fitted with a Trackspec Motorsports aluminum hood vent, a Vintage Exotics FIA Racing headlight kit with Octane Lighting LED units, a Scott Drake Le Mans–style gas door, and a Five Star RaceCar Bodies custom spoiler mount topped with an HDPE polymer rear spoiler.
Interior upgrades included converting everything to black and fitting Kirkey Racing 65 Series seats, RJS harnesses, a Sharkbar Series 2 harness bar, a Momo Prototipo steering wheel, a B&M Pro Stick gated shifter, a Classic Instruments Autocross Series speedo and tach, and Marshall Red-Line series center console gauges. There was, however, one component Dragovich intentionally left off the build.
“There was a point when I had the car disassembled in the fiberglass-repair stage and realized that…I had to decide if I wanted to install a roll cage,” he says. “I didn’t really want one because of how tight the C3 Corvette interior is. I figured that it would have been very hard to fit a set of racing seats without gutting the interior. Since I hadn’t planned to road race the car, I opted to leave it out.”
Under the hood, Dragovich initially kept things straightforward. The 350 that came with the car was a solid, if mild build, upgraded with a different intake and a Holley carburetor. “I pretty much left it like it was and just ran it that way,” he states. “I knew that in a year or two, I was going to have a new engine built for it and at that point, I didn’t have thousands of dollars to [spend].
“The previous owner’s uncle owned a performance-transmission shop,” he continues. “That was one of the high points of the car when I bought it because he had pulled the TH350 transmission out and had it rebuilt with all high-performance parts. All I did was change out the pump, replace the pan and gasket, install a shift kit, and fill it with ATI Performance synthetic fluid.”
At that point, the car was pressed into service, and Dragovich began revisiting familiar autocross spots within reach, such as the UMI Motorsports Park autocross venue in Clearfield. You might expect the story to end there, but what began as a simple interaction at a parts counter soon elevated the car to a whole new level.
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“I am a general manager at a national auto-parts retailer,” Dragovich says. “One day…one of my employees came over and said there was a gentleman he was working with that had in interest in vintage Corvettes. I mentioned to [the customer] that I was working on building a C3 road-racing replica/tribute car, and he replied that he used to road race Corvettes. He pulled out his phone and pulled up a picture of the Owens Corning Corvette.
“My initial thought was that he had purchased a replica to vintage race, since actual vintage C3 racecars are pretty much unobtainable. He replied that he wasn’t vintage racing it—he raced it back in the day and was the driver back in 1968, ’69, and ’70. A light bulb went off in my head, and I asked him his name. He replied, ‘Jerry Thompson.’ I told him I was…building a replica of his first C3 Corvette road racer and showed him the pictures. We got a good laugh over it, and it turned out that he lived about 10 minutes from me. It was a strange coincidence.”
That chance encounter with the Corvette-racing legend blossomed into a friendship, and during one conversation Thompson mentioned he was in the midst of building a 1969 restomod. Dragovich became invaluable in sourcing parts and serving as an extra set of hands on that project, while Thompson was equally helpful with tasks like rebuilding trailing arms and handling anything mechanical on the ’79.
“He had a lift I could use whenever I wanted, so my car was frequently over there as I was slowly upgrading and changing suspension parts. I had probably run a couple autocrosses at that point and he asked me, ‘When are you going to get that dog of an engine out of that thing?’”
During his racing days, Thompson worked as the head of the Engine Development Test Engineers at Chevrolet’s Engineering Center in Warren, Michigan, so he knew how to extract maximum power for a given application. He also happened to have a sizable stash of top-shelf parts that he contributed toward a new engine for Dragovich’s car. From his inventory, the mill began to take shape around a 1986 350 with heavily modded (by Thompson) heads, a steel crank, CP Carrillo rods, and a baffled oil pan.
The remaining components were sourced from Summit Racing, including Wiseco forged pistons, an Isky Racing 280-Mega Hydraulic camshaft, and an Edelbrock Performer RPM Air-Gap aluminum intake manifold topped with an AED Performance–modified Holley 750 carburetor.
The build progressed slowly but steadily under Thompson’s supervision, ultimately taking the better part of a year to complete. Once machined and assembled, the 355-ci powerplant had a calculated 11:5:1 compression ratio. Dragovich estimates that it makes around 500 horsepower—roughly twice that of the previous 350—with plenty of low-end grunt.
“[It’s] a torque monster—[it] comes out of a corner very strong, and just keeps on pulling hard,” he reports. “Lots of feathering the throttle at early exit of a corner [is needed] because the rear end can break away so easily.” The only major component that remains from the original setup is the built TH350, which Dragovich plans to eventually replace with a bespoke overdrive trans.
The question with any build is whether the final result matches original expectations, but Dragovich’s journey with his ’79 retro-racer doesn’t appear to be at an end.
“Like many builds, this one is ever evolving,” he says. “I don’t think it will ever be truly ‘finished.’ I take great satisfaction in knowing that I started with a very mundane stock 1979 Corvette and have built it into a car that will hang with modern performance cars, while still retaining the stock frame and essentially 60-year-old suspension technology. The car is a blast to drive and turns heads everywhere.”
