Stolen Corvette found 32 years later, with a reunion made possible by GM

Corvette fans generally rank the 1979 editions among their least favorite of any model years, but don't tell that to George Talley. The Detroit man had his 1979 Stingray stolen off the street in July of 1981 — a car he considered lost for good, until last week.

Thanks to the nationwide databases of stolen vehicles, the VIN of Talley's missing Vette was flagged in Mississippi, where authorities found the car in rough shape — interior ripped, engine partially disassembled — but still mostly intact, with 47,000 miles on the odometer.

"I was sitting at home last Friday looking at Judge Mathis, and I get a call from AAA telling me you have a Corvette in Mississippi, come and get it," Talley told WXYZ-TV in Detroit. "And, uh… I said, ‘what?’”

While he was delighted at the car's recovery, Talley wasn't sure exactly how he'd get the car back home until Wednesday, when General Motors' head of vehicle development Mark Reuss volunteered to cover any shipping costs. Reuss  owns several older Vettes, and also helped arrange the planned restoration of the cars damaged by the sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky. Vette fans may disagree about the best and the worst, but they do stick together.