At the year-ending PRI Trade Show in Indianapolis, shop proprietors Rick and Casey Moore displayed the recently completed car in the Gandrud Chevrolet booth, adjacent to the main Chevrolet Performance display. The C2 Corvette offered attendees a glimpse of one of many crate engine* uses.

"They're awesome," Rick Moore said of the Bowtie's LT4 crate power plant offerings. "Tons of power, very drivable. To me, it was the right thing to do to this car."

The Corvette came from the organizer of a car show in Deadwood, South Dakota, and had only 30,000 original miles along with the original paint.

Moore planned to build a restomod and maintain that original paint while swapping in an LT1 crate engine.* However, the opportunity arose during the build to attend the SEMA Show and Moore decided to upgrade to Chevy's top-of-the-line LT4. Due to the supercharged engine's large displacement, Moore selected a hood from a 1965 Corvette for added clearance.

"We bought the other hood and my son-in-law, who paints cars now, said, ‘If I'm going to paint and blend the hood, I'll just paint the whole car,'" Moore explained.

Today the mid-year Corvette features its original Silver Blue color, but with new paint that glistened under the lights of the Indiana Convention Center. The car's Budnik wheels and Nitto tires only added to the shine.

Under the hood, the LT4 crate engine is mated to a SuperMatic 4L75-E four-speed automatic transmission, one of dozens of factory-matched Connect & Cruise Crate Powertrain Systems offered by Chevrolet Performance.

"I like the shift and I like the supercharger feel between the gears so that's why I like the 4L75," Moore said.

The powertrain is far from the only modern element on this Corvette. For many years, a large part of Moore's business was building or modifying frames for older vehicles, including Corvettes, classic Chevy trucks and Tri-Fives, with a C4 Corvette suspension added for more modern performance.

He's since sold the company, RR Frames, to longtime colleague Dylan Perrault. However, there is still much collaboration between RR Frames and Moores Garage, where Rick Moore and his fabricator son, Ricky, restore classic vehicles.

"This is an original frame, and then we modify the frame to make the C4 stuff fit," Rick Moore explained of the setup on the Corvette. "On these cars that's the only way we can do it. The pickups that we build, they're all new frames, but these Corvettes are the original."

The 1964 Corvette represented a new challenge for Moore, as it was the first time he had ever built a car on top of the already completed frame and suspension.

"This is something new, now I can tell my customers how to build their car and what they need to do," he said.

Moores Garage has long been a family operation with Rick, Casey and their son, Ricky, all working at the shop. Meanwhile, Ricky's sister, Alex, and her husband, Jake Neibauer, run Jake's Collision and Paint, also located in Belfry. It was Jake who painted the Corvette. Jake and Alex have two young boys, Renner and Miles, who are budding automotive enthusiasts as well.

Among the other recent projects for Moores Garage were an LT4-powered 1967 Chevellle and an LS3*-swapped 1968 Pontiac Firebird. In addition, the shop also was responsible for one of the first LT4 builds in a 1957 Chevy. 

Rick Moore has always been a Chevy fan and says he prefers to work on Bowtie builds, but also jokes, "If you sand on anything long enough you'll fall in love with it."

That love is why Moores Garage keeps turning out treasures.