Fifty-eight years ago today, “Astoria Chas” Snyder lost his life in Vietnam. ASTORIA CHAS’ KO-MOTION L88 CORVETTE is a four-wheeled memorial that speaks volumes about Chas and young Americans and their dreams!
In 1967 in Astoria, NY, Charlie Snyder was 20 and living the American dream. He drove a very fast 1967 427/435 Corvette convertible and was a regular at “Connecting Highway” and other local area street racing haunts. Looking like a cross between James Dean and The Fonz, he was, according to his friends, “the neighborhood babe magnet.”
However, it didn’t take long for Charlie to be taken off the market. He became engaged to high school sweetheart Teri Berket, and the couple planned a late-1968 wedding. Then, like tens of thousands of young men in this country, Charlie and Teri’s dream was shattered by the war in Southeast Asia.
His life was cut short on August 27, 1968, just a few months after arriving in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne. His family and friends were devastated; some never recovered from the shock. Everyone who knew Charlie Snyder felt the loss.
No one was more affected than Charlie’s fiancé, Teri Berket, who saw him off at the airport for the flight to Vietnam. “We were to be married in Hawaii when Charlie got his first R&R. We even had plans to tour with KO-MOTION when his obligation was over. Our dreams and our lives were crushed,” said a teary-eyed Berket during an interview in 2003.
After the funeral, Charlie’s sister Sharon and her husband John Holdorf and friends Al Barberio and Jim Palam continued campaigning KO-MOTION in search of Charlie’s dream – a national record. Baldwin Chevrolet’s John Mahler, who placed the original order for the L88 engines for Rosen and was intimately involved with the Corvette, volunteered his services. Joining them were Joel Rosen and Bill Foster, both experienced and successful drag racers. It would be Bill Foster who would set the AHRA national record driving ASTORIA CHAS’ KO-MOTION L88 CORVETTE.
Glen Spielberg now owns KO-MOTION, and the A/Corvette AHRA World Record it set by Charlie’s friends after he died honors the memory of this young man. Charlie may not be with us anymore, but his dream lives, and Spielberg is the keeper of that dream.
Many decades ago, eight-year-old Glen Spielberg was on a library trip with his classmates from PS 272 in Brooklyn when he saw the car that would have a profound impact on his life. He spotted a Marlboro Maroon 1967 Corvette adorned with KO-MOTION on its front fenders and “Astoria Chas” on its doors being pushed out of a garage. He recognized it immediately from stories and photos he had seen in CARS and SPEED & SUPERCAR.
It was Astoria, New York drag racer Charlie Snyder’s L88 Corvette, built and tuned by Joel Rosen at Motion Performance and sponsored by CARS Magazine. Just eight years old, Glen was already a big fan of Rosen’s ground-pounding Baldwin-Motion Phase III supercars, especially 427 Camaros and Corvettes.
Mesmerized by the gold-leaf-lettered racecar, Glen Spielberg had only one thing on his mind – and it certainly wasn’t going to the library! “I tried, with no success, to convince my mother, teacher and anyone who would listen that I could learn more staying with the Corvette than I could at the library,” reminisces an older and wiser Spielberg. “I knew it wouldn’t work, but I had to try.” “From the minute I first spotted KO-MOTION, I knew that this was the car I wanted to own. Its image was solidly embedded in my brain’s hard drive that day,” added Spielberg.
Young Glen knew a lot about the Corvette. What he didn’t know that day in Brooklyn was that its owner had been drafted and was going through Jump School. He wouldn’t find out that Charlie Snyder had been killed until reading about it in the January 1969 issue of CARS Magazine. On August 27, 1968, just a few months after arriving in Vietnam with the First Cavalry, a hand grenade snuffed out 21-year-old Charlie Snyder’s life.
ASTORIA CHAS’ KO-MOTION L88 CORVETTE originally left Chevrolet’s St. Louis plant with 427/435 power and was first modified, and later fitted with an L88 engine, at Motion Performance. In 1967, its factory-fresh Marlboro Maroon paint was decorated with low-buck lettering on its front fenders and an assortment of popular speed equipment decals. Charlie Snyder was a typical “Weekend Warrior,” driving (and racing) his Corvette on the street during the week and drag racing on weekends.
“I rode with Charlie two or three times to the Connecting Highway in Queens to participate in street races. The KO-MOTION Vette was simply the meanest, baddest car to run the streets at the time. Charlie was in his glory behind the wheel. I was hanging on for my life – and loving every minute of it,” said boyhood friend Jim Palam.
“Shortly after Chevrolet announced the legendary 427 L88 Corvette option, I ordered two replacement engines (actually assembled short blocks and two sets of First Design closed-chamber aluminum heads) from Baldwin Chevrolet’s John Mahler,” said Rosen. “We needed the L88s for two projects: Motion’s record-setting A/MP Camaro and Charlie Snyder’s Corvette, both sponsored by Marty Schorr at CARS Magazine.”
Once the L88 engine was blueprinted and balanced and the Corvette’s suspension sorted out, ASTORIA CHAS’ KO-MOTION L88 CORVETTE received professional gold leaf lettering along with sponsorship signage from Motion, CARS Magazine, Baldwin Chevrolet and the Motion Supercar Club. “After checking the new L88’s plugs, jetting and timing, I made the first run down New York National Speedway. I dumped the clutch and everything hooked up, and I cruised back to the pits with an impressive 124 mph/11.50-second time slip. Charlie was thrilled. We knew we had a winner,” recalls Rosen.
It actually took Glen, Spielberg more than 30 years to turn his childhood fantasy into an adult reality. In October 2000, he acquired what long-time Motion collector and historian Tim Penton of Hammond, LA, considers ‘The Holy Grail of Motion Cars.’ “It’s one of the most desirable Motion-built cars ever and one of the top two on my personal list of favorites.”
Glen Spielberg enlisted the help of a network of friends and a professional locator in his quest for KO-MOTION. Ironically, by the time Spielberg found the Motion L88 Sting Ray, he was already the proud owner of a restored production L88 Corvette. Glen’s business, Advanced Auto Body in Bellmore, New York, is just a 15–20-minute ride from the old Motion Performance location in Baldwin where the Corvette was race-prepped and maintained!
Glen’s hired gun found ASTORIA CHAS’ KO-MOTION L88 CORVETTE in 1992. Sharon Holdorf had stored her brother’s Corvette convertible under wraps after its last 10-second run in 1969. It had been trailered from the strip to her garage in Astoria. And that’s exactly how Glen found it more than 30 years later, complete with a 10.74-second time slip under the front seat and “10.74” in shoe polish on the hardtop’s plexiglass back window. Its original, never renewed, 1967 New York State registration (in the name of Charlie’s mother, Grace Snyder) was still in the locked glove compartment!
Once zeroed in on the location of the big-block racer, Glen opened up a dialog with Charlie’s sister and brother-in-law, Sharon and John Holdorf. John was a childhood friend of Charlie’s and part of the KO-MOTION pit crew. By now, word had leaked out that the L88 Corvette was alive, well, and sequestered in a garage in Astoria, NY. The Holdorfs were inundated by phone calls. Most inquiries were from dealers and speculators who wanted to “flip” the Corvette to one of the many hardcore Motion collectors who had unsuccessfully tried to track it down. Sharon and John were not interested in selling.
Over time, Glen Spielberg convinced them of his passion for preserving ASTORIA CHAS’ KO-MOTION L88 CORVETTE and its history as well as his sincerity about neither restoring nor flipping it. The Holdorfs decided to offer Glen first right of refusal when and if they decided to sell. Glen continued calling and visiting Sharon and John a few times a year, year after year, just to keep in touch. They became friends. In July 2000 and retired from the New York Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority (MTA), John Holdorf suffered a fatal heart attack. Sharon kept in contact with Glen and, a couple of months later, decided to finally part with her late brother’s car.
In October, Glen Spielberg drove to Charlie’s old neighborhood in Astoria and, for the first time in more than 30 years, he exposed the Sting Ray convertible to daylight. “I felt a sense of history and as though I had just won the lottery,” said Spielberg. “I wanted KO-MOTION because it was built by Joel Rosen in the shop where he produced Baldwin-Motion Chevy Supercars, and it was featured in some of my favorite magazines. It also held an AHRA A/Corvette World Record (129 mph/11.04 seconds) that was set in the owner’s name after he lost his life in Vietnam. There’s much history here,” said Glen.
The engine that was in the Corvette when the AHRA record was set was a blueprinted L88 with Crankshaft Co. Super/Stock Thermo Rev crank, reworked L88 rods, 12.5 ForgedTrue .030-inch-over pistons with Dykes rings, deep pan and a special oil pump. It also featured ported and machined 107.9-cc aluminum heads, Motion .610-inch lift, 310/320-degree duration Phase III “C” cam and valve train, factory alloy intake manifold with hogged-out center divider and a stagger-jetted 850-cfm Holley double-pumper. Hooker headers were plumbed into outside exhausts, actually lighter than the stock undercar system. The Corvette had been originally equipped with conventional exhausts.
Other details include Motion Super/Spark ignition with Phase III CD, 40-degrees total advance (Sunoco 260 gas), ChampionN-64Y plugs gapped at .028-inch, Schiefer clutch, flywheel, Ford-type pressure plate, Lakewood scattershield, Hurst/M-22 four-speed, heat-treated 4.88 Posi, heat-treated axles, Super-Bite suspension, extensive chassis bracing, 9.7-inch-wide slicks (7 to 10 psi) and Stahl 7.10×15-inch front tires pumped to 50 psi. Its original chassis had started to show stress cracks and had been replaced in 1968.
What eluded Charlie Snyder during his short life honored him after his death. Thanks to his friends and family, who campaigned KO-MOTION after he was gone, Charlie got the A/Corvette World Record. The AHRA record book reads, “In Memory Of Astoria Chas.”
After the AHRA record was set, KO-MOTION’s L88 engine received Crane-prepped Gen II open-chamber aluminum heads, Phase III .625-inch lift cam with needle-bearing roller rockers and a Holley three-barrel carb on an alloy high-rise manifold. A variety of heads, cams, valve trains, manifolds and carburetors were experimented with during the 1968 and 1969 seasons. For its last runs, the big-block was fitted with an 850 Holley, an L88 air cleaner, stock-style rockers and fresh air hood.
It was with this combination that John Mahler put ASTORIA CHAS’ KO-MOTION L88 CORVETTE into the 10s. After running 10.47 at a local strip one Sunday, Mahler and crew trailered the Corvette back to Charlie’s sister’s house. They unloaded the 10-second Corvette, pushed it into the garage and covered it up. That’s exactly where and how Glen Spielberg found it more than 30 years later!
Glen hauled the Corvette back to his shop, cleaned it up, and got it running. The original paint and lettering showed very little wear and were left untouched. With a little attention, the L88 fired up, sounding as if it was ready to go back to the track. Seeing it under the lights in his shop, Spielberg had flashbacks to that day when, on a grade school class trip, he first saw KO-MOTION.
KO-MOTION was shown to the public for the first time since 1969 at Corvettes At Carlisle in August 2001. The ground-shaking big-block racer was the centerpiece of a select group of Corvettes personally assembled by the late, rare Corvette collector and Carlisle principal, Chip Miller. It was also featured in a cover story I wrote in VETTE in January 2002.
Today Charlie Snyder’s memory is honored, along with more than 58,000 men and women who lost their lives in a senseless war in Southeast Asia, on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “The Wall”, in Washington, DC.
My daughter, Collier Schorr, who at age four accompanied me when I photographed Astoria Chas and KO-MOTION in 1967, also honored Charlie. Her highly acclaimed show, There I Was in September-October 2007 at 303 Gallery in New York City and her book There I Was published by SteidlMACK in 2008 are fitting tributes to the ravages of war and to the many stories of lives cut short.
“A vitrine in the back room collects assorted mementos from Snyder’s life. Schorr’s acute eye for selection and juxtaposition is in full evidence here, and the whole assemblage seems a shrine to memory’s tenuous grip and the impossible trauma of life and love lost.” David Velasco, Artforum Magazine, September 2007.
At the opening of There I Was, Charlie’s friend Jim Palam, who owns an advertising-marketing agency, Jim Palam & Partners in Solvang, CA, commented to Collier, “I can’t tell you how this touches me. I feel like I’m right there again, handing a 9/16-inch wrench to Charlie, Joel Rosen, or Big John Holdorf. I love the energy you captured in these sketches.”
Thanks to Glen Spielberg’s pit-bull persistence, KO-MOTION has been unearthed after hibernating for decades. He has brought both the car and the “Astoria Chas” legend to the public’s attention. It was a feature attraction at MCACN 2010 (Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals) accompanied by builder Joel Rosen, Gary “Local Brush” Kupfer, Marty Schorr, and Glen Spielberg, top photo. Charlie would be proud.
This tribute to “Astoria Chas” Snyder was originally published in https://www.amazon.com/Motion-Performance-Tales-Muscle-Builder/dp/0760355606/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493151743&sr=1-1&keywords=MOTION+Performance%2C+Tales+of+a+muscle+car+builder
Check out Corvette historian-illustrator Scott Teeters’ The Buddy Holly of Drag Racing: Astoria Chas’ 1967 L88 Corvette @ https://corvettereport.com/from-the-archives-of-cars-magazine-in-memory-of-astoria-chas-1967-427-l88-corvette-roadster/