There's a small mountain town somewhere up north — never mind exactly where — where the locals will tell you a particular kind of story if you stick around the diner long enough. They'll wait until the second cup of coffee, look out the window to make sure no kids are listening, and then lower their voice the way people do when they're about to tell you something true.
Santa, they'll tell you, has been keeping a 1978 Corvette in a barn on the edge of town since 1979. Black on top, silver on the bottom, red pinstripe down the side. Pace Car edition. Bought new off a dealer lot somewhere in Indiana the summer after the Indy 500. He keeps it under a tarp most of the year. But every Christmas Eve, after the reindeer are settled in for the night and the elves have closed up the workshop, Santa walks out to that barn, pulls the cover off, and takes the long way home.
This card is a small tribute to that story.
The Right Year for a Sleigh
Santa, the locals will explain, doesn't pick his vehicles randomly. He picked the 1978 specifically. It was the Corvette's 25th anniversary year — the first time the Indianapolis Motor Speedway had ever chosen a Corvette to pace the Indy 500. May 28, 1978. Jim Rathmann at the wheel, his fifth time pacing the race. Al Unser took the checkered flag in his Lola-Cosworth and drove home with one of just three official Pace Cars Chevrolet built that year. The car on this Christmas card is the replica — Chevrolet originally planned to build 300, then 2,500, then finally 6,502 of them, one for every Chevy dealer in America. Black on top, silver on the bottom, red pinstripe between them. Mirrored T-tops. Aluminum wheels with red accent stripes. P255/60R15 Goodyear GTs. If you grew up in the late seventies, you know exactly what this car sounds like.
It was, in other words, the most American car of the most American year — bicentennial fever still in the air, Cold War hum on the radio, and the Indy 500 still the biggest single-day sporting event in the country. Of course Santa picked it. The man understands tradition better than anyone.
The L82 350-cubic-inch V8 made 220 horsepower. 0–60 in about 7.8 seconds, top speed somewhere around 125 mph. None of that's particularly impressive by modern standards — but it doesn't have to be. It just has to be enough to take a man in a red suit around a quiet mountain road at midnight, with the heater on and an AM/FM eight-track playing Holly Jolly Christmas on a slightly worn cartridge.
What Santa Does in the Off-Season
The locals have a theory about why he keeps it. They say December 26th is the loneliest day of the year if your whole job is December 24th. The toys are delivered. The reindeer are tired. The cookies are eaten. The kids who waited up all night are now opening their presents, and the man who made it possible is sitting in a North Pole workshop staring at an empty list and feeling — well, retired, for about ten months.
So he keeps the Corvette. Every year on Christmas Eve, after the sleigh is unhitched and Mrs. Claus has gone to bed, Santa walks out to the barn, fires up the V8, and takes the slow way home through the mountains. Past the snowed-in cabin where the porch lights are still on. Past the lit-up Christmas tree at the edge of the village. Past the chimneys still wisping smoke from the last log on the fire. He doesn't go fast. The whole point isn't speed. The whole point is having one quiet hour, after all the work is done, to drive a car he loves through a night that finally belongs to him.
The locals have seen the headlights come down the mountain road around 4 a.m. on Christmas morning more than once. Black and silver. Red pinstripe. Faint sound of the engine echoing off the snowbanks. By sunrise the car is back under the tarp in the barn and Santa is asleep, and nobody who didn't see it is ever quite sure it happened.
A Card for the Believers
The image on this card is what that drive looks like. A 1978 Corvette Pace Car — the iconic black-over-silver, red pinstripe, mirrored T-tops, factory aluminum wheels, "1978 CORVETTE" lettered in clean script along the lower right. Behind the car, a snow-blanketed valley: a glowing Christmas tree with its star lit, a log cabin with smoke curling from the stone chimney and warm yellow light in every window, evergreens dusted with fresh powder, a winter sky going pink at the horizon. Holly and berry corners frame the whole scene. Merry Christmas! in classic red script in the upper left.
The painterly oil-painting finish softens the whole thing into the kind of image that lives somewhere between a memory and a wish — exactly where Christmas cards are supposed to sit. Honestly, look at the picture and tell me Santa isn't about to walk out of that cabin in jeans and a flannel shirt and slide behind the wheel.
Who This Card Is For
Send it to the Corvette person in your family. Every family has one — the uncle with three Corvettes in the garage, the cousin who's been restoring a '78 Pace Car since 2003, the dad who can name every C3 special edition without looking it up. Send it to the gearhead who keeps a model Corvette on the mantel next to the Christmas village. Send it to the friend who graduated high school in 1978 and watched Al Unser take the checkered flag with his mom and his sister and never quite got over how cool that black-and-silver pace car looked. Send it to anyone whose Christmas wishlist has, at some point in their life, included a Pace Car edition Corvette.
It works equally well as a Christmas card for car club members, NCRS judges, hot rod show regulars, and weekend cruisers who spend the off-season in a heated garage with a cup of coffee and a polishing cloth. Blank interior cards also frame nicely at 5x7, making this small piece of holiday automotive art at home on a workbench, a man cave wall, or next to a shelf full of die-cast Corvettes.
A Christmas the Corvette People Will Understand
Every Christmas needs its own kind of magic. For some people, it's the smell of pine. For others, it's the sound of bells. For some kids — and some adults who never quite stopped being those kids — it's the rumble of a small-block V8 echoing off a snowy mountain road on Christmas Eve, and the feeling that somewhere in the dark, somebody who's done a long day's work is taking the long way home.
Send one to someone who'd recognize that sound.
Explore the full collection of automotive, Americana, and holiday fine art greeting cards at Will Davis Studios.
