the seven Saudia 1977 Corvettes

photos from  prova275.tumblr.com

Back in 1977, the GM main agent in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ordered a shipment of cars from the USA. Included in that shipment were a number of Corvettes. Unfortunately not all the cars found buyers and some seven Corvettes, all painted in different colours, were stored in the desert for the next two years.

Then one day, a group of British engineers working for the state airline Saudia Airlines stumbled upon these seven Corvettes, and managed to purchase them for a bargain price of only £4500 each. The engineers really wanted to get them back to the UK, and struck a deal where Saudia Airlines would put together a package to make it all possible.

At the time, Saudia Airlines were a major sponsor of the Williams Grand Prix Engineering Formula One Team based at Didcot, Oxon. Part of the special package that they came up with would be for all seven Corvettes to be painted white, with the two-tone stripes in blue and green running from front to rear, including over the T-Tops, together with the crossed scimitars of the Saudi Royal Coat of Arms in gold on the bonnet, plus numerous other various adverting decals.

The paint-spraying team working for Saudia Airlines in Jeddah arrived applied a color scheme that would emulate that of the airline and the 1979 Williams Grand Prix Engineering Formula 1 Team FW07 race cars. The Goodyear Tyre Company supplied five tyres for each Corvette, while Gulf Oil paid all the fuel expenses. Once the cars had been painted and prepared, they were then all flown by Saudia Airlines Douglas DC-9 from Jeddah to Athens, Greece, from where they were driven across Greece by the engineers to a seaport where they boarded a ferry over to Southern Italy.

Part of the sponsorship package deal was for the Corvettes to visit major cities en route to the UK and stop off at Saudia Airlines offices, where stickers and badges were given away to enthusiasts and the public alike. The route took the Corvettes via Rome, Genoa, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Paris. info from http://www.saudiccc.com/blog/?p=1429