Michael Brown

Michael Brown is a filmmaker and Corvette enthusiast/collector. He has co-hosted TV episodes about Corvettes on Discovery's Velocity Channel and produced the documentary "The Quest."

Articles by Michael Brown

• Hitting the jackpot with the Astrovette

  Friday, November 04, 2016

  In 1971, ad man Danny Reed drove past a used car lot in Austin, Texas. It would be decades later before the lottery came to Texas, but he hit the jackpot anyway that day. Since Reed was both a Corvette and U.S. space program enthusiast, what he saw on the car lot had him making a U-turn almost immediately.

• Just what the Corvette hobby needs

  Friday, October 21, 2016

  After making my annual trek to Effingham, Illinois, to attend the 2016 edition of Mid America Motorworks' Corvette Funfest, I saw something I don't often see at a Corvette show. While Mike Yager and staff put on their usual excellent event, it wasn't their organizational skills that caught my attention. And no, I didn't stumble upon an earth-shattering '63 ZO6 recent barn find.

• A Carolina crop of all-black Corvettes

  Friday, October 07, 2016

  A few years ago, while visiting a mountain getaway place my wife and I own in western North Carolina, I took a vehicle into Asheville for service. I was there about four hours, and in the course of talking with the service manager, I learned about a Corvette collection that was nearby.

• How ‘redneck ingenuity’ with a Corvette helped launch a racing empire

  Friday, September 23, 2016

  Just seven years into a proven and successful racing career, a young Roger Penske decided to pull into the pits for the final time and focus his attention on a new auto dealership he'd acquired. But his time away from racing was short-lived. In 1965 — the same year he started the dealership — he founded Penske Racing. More than 50 years later, Penske Racing is a worldwide conglomerate, and the Penske name is legendary.

• Finding the world’s oldest Corvette

  Friday, September 09, 2016

  The General Motors "Motorama" held at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria hotel in January of 1953 was extremely successful. In a film featuring highlights of the event, a narrator breathlessly intoned, "The Chevrolet Corvette, and the other customized models, are not for sale, yet. They're here to give tangible form to the drawing board ideas of today, out of which may grow the shape of things to come ..."

• From pig farm to Corvette collection

  Friday, August 26, 2016

  If one day you find yourself in a Wal-Mart-size building in Florida and hear "cleanup on Aisle 3" over the loudspeaker, it's most likely transmission fluid or motor oil rather than a spilled carton of milk that needs to be mopped up. This particular building in Punta Gorda once was a Wal-Mart — all 100,000 square feet of it. But should there be any spilled fluids, they would come from one of about 200 classic cars that are on display at Rick Treworgy's Muscle Car City.

• The Corvette collection built by weed killer

  Friday, August 12, 2016

  The next time you're working in the yard and using weed killer, you just might be doing something else that would never occur to you. You could be helping Dennis Albaugh add another car to his massive collection of Corvettes and Chevy muscle cars.

• What ever happened to the mysterious No. 1 Corvette?

  Friday, August 05, 2016

  When more than 500 people saw the end of the documentary, "The Quest," during its world premiere on May 6, 2011, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, many of them admitted they learned of a mystery of which they had not previously been aware.

• Doyle Thomas and his hamburger Corvettes

  Monday, July 18, 2016

  As a teenager in the piney woods of East Texas during the 1960s, Doyle Thomas landed a part-time job on weekends. There wasn't a lot of glamour attached to his new position. As with an untold number of his friends and contemporaries around the country, he worked at a fast food restaurant. The location was part of a chain known primarily in the southeastern U.S. at the time: Whataburger.

• Heading out on Highway 93

  Thursday, June 30, 2016

  I'll admit right up front that I wouldn't have written about this years ago when our daughter and son were teenagers. It's about foolish things teenagers sometimes do with cars. Only the progression of age and the anointing of good luck at the time can grant reflection, which is tempered by wisdom.

• Overnight Corvette collection

  Friday, June 17, 2016

  Even casual historians of the American West in the late 19th century may know that the tiny town of Nocona, Texas, was the last jumping-off point of the Chisholm Trail before it crossed the Red River into Indian Territory. In 1907, that territory became Oklahoma.Cattle drives helped give Nocona its identity. But now, many of the “drives” in Nocona are in Corvettes and classic muscle cars. How that came to be is a tale that could only have its origins in Texas, where everything seems to be bigger.

• John Fitch: A storied life

  Monday, June 06, 2016

  ​With the 84th running of the 24 Hours at Le Mans this month, I'm drawn back to that race six years ago. It was my first time there. The noise was deafening, and the crowds were overwhelming. The experience, however, was exhilarating.