Heather Holler wasn’t born a gearhead. As a child, the closest she got to a high performance car was sitting in her father Jeff’s lap while he let her “steer” his 1970 Corvette convertible down the driveway (“It was more like letting it slowly drift into the ditch,” she explained).
Heather’s childhood and teen years were occupied with ski-racing, snowboarding, and soccer. Cars were just a way to get to practice and games.
But a day at the autocross track changed everything.
“My boyfriend was into American muscle cars. He took me to an autocross event and I ended up beating him driving his own car,” Heather said. “I had the goosebumps the whole time, I was so excited!”
Heather sold her SUV two weeks later and bought a 2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS to build into an autocross terror. Unbeknownst to her, the car had a blown engine, so her introduction to wrenching was doing an engine swap and turbo upgrade. That experience lit a fire to become a mechanic. Heather went to tech school and got a job as a certified Subaru mechanic after graduation.
During those six years wrenching on Outbacks and Legacys, Heather became interested in rally racing. In 2016 she filled out an application to join the Subaru Red Bull Global Rallycross Series team, was accepted, and began a career in motorsports.
Long story short, Heather is now an in-demand mechanic. Her resume includes gigs on DirtFish Racing’s Red Bull Global and America’s Rally Cross team, Vaughn Gittin Jr.’s Formula Drift team, and Hyundai’s World Rallycross (WRC) team. Most recently Heather was a crew member on X-Raid’s 2023 Dakar team, working on Yamaha YXZ1000Rs running in the Lightweight UTV T3 class.
Yeah, she has chops.
Which brings us back to dad’s Corvette. Over the years the car was in and out of shops for restoration work, but it always came back in worse condition than it was before. Her father also attempted a driveway restoration in the late 1990s that did not go so well. The car sat in storage until 2019 when Heather and her husband Garrett trailered it from Nevada to their shop in Mooresville, North Carolina for a full restoration.
What they found was not pretty.
“My father was not really a hands-on car guy, he built houses,” Heather explained. “As we took the thing apart I shook my head and said, ‘what were you thinking, dad?’ There were cracks and gouges in the front fenders. The rear valance panel was patched with pop-riveted steel and fiberglassed over. I went to take out a bumper bolt and it was slathered with fiberglass. After we removed the front clip, we found a couple of parking citations in the fresh air intake behind the passenger side fender vent.”
In addition to the bodywork shenanigans, most of the interior was ruined by rodents, every hose, seal, wire, and weatherstrip was rotted out, and the only salvageable part of the convertible top was the frame. You can view the carnage on Heather’s YouTube Channel.
As of this writing, the car is disassembled and stripped, ready for bodywork. The plan is to have the car finished by early 2024, with Heather and her dog, Sir Emmett von Brownsagger (don’t ask), roadtripping back to Nevada to hand the Corvette over to her dad. There are special plans for that which we are not at liberty to divulge.
The Summit Racing folks are documenting the project as it rolls along, so check back to see what other surprises Heather and Garrett uncover.
What a great project.
I’m working on my son’s 1972 c10 4×4 from high school.