The incredible story of this stolen 1968 Corvette is one worth revisiting, and now that the car has changed hands, we can do precisely that.
Automotive theft has existed, well, essentially since the advent of the automobile, and in recent years, has only gotten worse. This is particularly true of more desirable and valuable vehicles – such as Corvettes – and as such, we’ve seen our fair share of wild theft stories over the years. However, the tale of Alan Poster and his 1968 Corvette is a pretty fascinating and unique one that actually began decades ago, was seemingly resolved in the mid-2000s, and recently came back to light after Poster sold his car on Bring a Trailer.
Poster purchased his 1969 Corvette new in New York City all those years ago, but just a few months later – in January 1969 – it was stolen, presumably never to be found again. In fact, 37 years passed before Poster would finally be reunited with his C3, and it only happened because someone tried to export the car to another country in 2005. When customs ran the VIN, they discovered that the 1968 Corvette was listed as stolen, and a few weeks later, Poster was reunited with his car.
This process wasn’t exactly an easy one, however, given the age of the stolen vehicle report. Thus, two detectives spent a total of four days lulling over hundreds of records and thousands of files before finally finding Poster’s original stolen vehicle report – a key discovery given the fact that they only had a select amount of time to do so before the car was released and shipped to Sweden away. Needless to say, when Poster got the call from law enforcement informing him they found his Corvette, he thought it was a prank call at first.
In the years it was missing, the 1968 Corvette had been repainted in a shade of gray with a red interior and fitted with a 427 in place of the original 327. During its ensuing refurbishment, Poster corrected that by returning the car to its original shade of Le Mans Blue with a blue interior, and even swapped out the big block with a a replacement 327.
After this process was complete, Poster proceeded to drive and enjoy his car for a while, but now that he’s in his 80s, eventually decided that it was time to let go of his 1968 Corvette. The car netted $40k at auction – quite a bit less than the $100k he was offered years ago by comedian Jerry Lewis – but this incredible story is worth retelling, regardless. The only unfortunate component here is the fact that the original thief was never found, meaning that they weren’t punished for their crime – at least as far as we know – but we’ll just have to put our faith in the fact that karma often takes care of those sorts of things for us.