Jan Hyde, 82, a retired real-estate investment banker and consultant, on his 1960 Chevrolet Corvette, as told to A.J. Baime.

If I had to argue one reason why the Chevrolet Corvette exists on this planet, it would be racing. When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, there was a wealthy Gulf Oil executive named Grady Davis who started a Corvette racing team around 1961. He had two noteworthy drivers: a Washington, D.C.-based racer named Dr. Dick Thompson (they called him “The Flying Dentist”) and a guy named Don Yenko, who owned a Chevrolet dealership outside my hometown called Yenko Chevrolet.