Bob Pelikan and a group of fellow gearheads from Half Moon Bay, Calif. have a long tradition of meeting for breakfast every Saturday. On one Saturday in 2013, Pelikan drove to the breakfast in the 1968 Jeepster Commando he had recently revived (after it had been abandoned in a warehouse for 20 years). As fate would have it, Pelikan parked the Jeepster next to a 2004 C5 Corvette.
Looking at the two cars side by side, Pelikan noticed that the wheelbase of the two cars appeared to be the same. “I started thinking,” he said. “If I took the body off of the C5 Vette and replaced it with the Jeepster’s body, that would be fascinating.” That was the genesis of the CorVeep.
The CorVeep’s donor car, a 2005 C5 Corvette
A few months later, Pelikan bought a wrecked 2005 Corvette at an insurance auction. “The C5 had a smashed front clip, but the frame was straight, and everything else in the car still worked perfectly,” said Pelikan. He sold both the Corvette body and the Jeepster chassis—and the conversion project was off and running.
The Jeepster body and C5 Corvette chassis ready for the mashup
The Corveep as a work-in-progress with an 18-inch gap in the body
With the Jeepster body and C5 chassis side by side, it was clear that the Jeepster body needed to be stretched about eight inches from the A-pillar forward. Pelikan is a retired mechanical engineer and a master at custom bodywork, so it was not hard for him to modify the body’s frame rails, open the rear fender wells to fit the Corvette’s tires, and fabricate body mounts to put the Jeepster’s body on its new chassis.
He used the C5’s dash and seats. All the Corvette’s original wiring, computers, air conditioning, and lighting controls were retained—with the C5’s light wiring connecting directly to the Jeepster’s headlights, taillights, and turn signals. Pelikan updated the vehicle to a locking differential with a lower final drive. In a final touch, Pelikan painted the CorVeep “Grabber Blue,” a Ford Mustang Color.
Bob Pelikan showing his CorVeep
The Corveep Is Born
One of Pelikan’s favorite views of the car is its rear end with the four Corvette exhaust pipes sticking out. “I took one of the rear fender lips that I had cut out and used that to fashion the trim around the exhaust tips,” he said. Pelikan said that eBay was an excellent source of custom parts for the Jeepster body. “I got the fender flairs on eBay,” he said.
With the body swap complete, the CorVeep started easily, and (despite a few minor issues) ran great. It’s about the same weight as a stock C5, so it still goes 0-60 in about five seconds.
Bob Pelikan’s favorite view of the Corveep shows off its quad tail pipes
“I’m an old guy that likes Corvettes, but doesn’t like the image of an old guy in a Corvette,” Pelikan said. “So the CorVeep is a good way to be driving a Corvette without anyone knowing.”
