EACH WEEK FROM 1960 through 1964, Route 66 came into the living rooms and dens of American homes. This TV show, written by Stirling Silliphant, tracked the adventures of two young men from the East: Tod, a well-to-do kid, and Buzz, his streetwise companion. A constant throughout their westbound adventures on Route 66: a new Corvette roadster. Chevrolet, a show sponsor, supplied two Corvettes to the set every six months or so.
Martin Milner, who played Todd and went on to be the infamous Officer Pete Malloy on the Adam 12 TV show, remembers a time when a man who worked on the show borrowed the car for a night. "He had a date or something, so we let him borrow the Corvette. He crashed it, though, and was put in jail.
"So I went down to get him out and we both went back over to the crash site. There were pieces of Corvette all over the street because, as you know, Corvettes come apart pretty well when they get hit. Anyway, people kept bringing me pieces of the Vette's body to autograph!"
With Chevy as the show's sponsor, you might think Milner had a Vette of his own to drive all the time. Such was not the case, though it could have been because cast members could choose any car in the Chevy lineup as a personal car. Milner said he really liked Corvettes, calling them "great cars to drive." But with a wife and kids traveling with him, "we just had to have a bigger car." Therefore Milner avoided the Vette and opted for a Vair - a brand-new Corvair, that is; a Greenbrier van. "It had lots of space."