KO-MOTION - Astoria Chas

[Dog427435]

[b] If anyone has not heard, there is an exhibit that started today in NYC examining
the life and death of KO-Motion's owner Charlie "Astoria Chas" Snyder .
It is a work of Collier Schorr, Marty Schorr's daughter.
It looks interesting and worth a trip into the City!
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This article is in this weeks Old Cars Weekly
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This is an excerpt from her press release
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The exhibition There I Was, by Collier Schorr, looks to America and specifically the muscle car
counter culture of the 1960s in Long Island and Queens, NY.
This history is related through the short but spectacular life of charismatic 21-year-old
drag car racer Charlie "Astoria Chas” Synder and his '67 "Ko-Motion" Corvette. At the age of 5
Schorr accompanied her father Martyn Schorr, a photographer
and journalist to a local racetrack where she watched Astoria Chas work on his car.
A subsequent article followed in CARS Magazine, with the now eerie headline
“While Astoria Chas is doing his thing in Vietnam his friends are racing his L-88."
By the time the article was published Charlie had already been killed overseas.
There I Was is Snyder's story and Schorr's dilemma. He was there; she was not.
The project examines the role of the photograph as proof of the photographer's presence,
territory and view and the difficulty of representing any past without the theatricality of
re-staging it. Using a collision of source materials for the drawings beginning with her father's
images and Snyder's own snapshots taken in Vietnam, Schorr then draws from
“professional” reportage pictures, so as to describe, literally sketch out, one monumental trip
from Queens, NY to Vietnam and back. Thus conjuring up an expressionistic portrait of the
dichotomies of late-1960s America.
These dichotomies are echoed in the formal tropes the work bounces between, from gestural
strokes to hard-edged, almost woodcut-like pencil renderings depending on the tone and
subject matter of the pictures.

Machine Gun Dedication,an image of a buddy posing for Snyder, contrasts a drawing of a
blissful Snyder, posing for the artist’s father, reaching into the engine compartment of his racecar.
Drawing K, in which an unknown figure is frantic, wearing a blood-splattered shirt, foreshadows
the portrait of a uniformed Snyder fresh from jump school and visiting his mother’s candy store
in Astoria, NY. These discordant frictions between pain and bravado and tranquility and chaos
add up to a complex and multi-faceted portrait of escape, culture, dreams and mortality in a
fractured wartime America.
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[Charles]

Very interesting, thanks for the details! Martyn L. Schorr did a story on the Corvette that was then featured in the Rodder & Super/Stock magazine with a November 1967 cover date. (It appeared on the newsstand August 21) It featured "Astoria Chas" wrenching on his Corvette and the details that go into making an 11 second Corvette. Later it ran 11.50 at 124 when run at New York National Speedway. All this with 4.56 gears and only 8 inch slicks. Motion tuned Chevy Power gets the job done!

[Kim_Howie]

The Vettes top has John Mahler name on it, is this the same John Mahler who owns the red ZL-1 Vette?

[COPO]

John Mahler worked at Baldwin Chev. as the parts manager and was instrumental in the establishment of the BM Cars. He attended the SCR with Joel a few years back. I don't think he is the same guy with the ZL-1.

[six-corners]

I'm sure some you have tried this...but for thse that have not...go to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Page. There is some more info there on him Charles. I was going to post this a few days ago, but it was being hacked.

[x Baldwin Motion]

CHARLES JOHN SNYDER


PFC - E3 - Army - Selective Service
1st Cav Division (AMBL)

Length of service 0 years
His tour began on Jul 4, 1968
Casualty was on Aug 27, 1968
In THUA THIEN, SOUTH VIETNAM
Non-Hostile, died of illness/injury, GROUND CASUALTY
ACCIDENTAL SELF-DESTRUCTION
Body was recovered

Panel 46W - Line 45

http://thewall-usa.com/guest.asp?recid=48767



the war sucked then, it still sucks today.

[x Baldwin Motion]

Ko-Motion website

[wannarun70]

found this ad in the new york times 10/20/1967

[Tom Hartman]

Here is my Ko-Motion car, even if it is only 1/25 scale. Awesome car!

Tom

[JRSully]

I know somebody here on LI that ran against the KoMotion Vette all the time at National, he ran a 58 Chevy with a stroked 500" 409 built by S+K, beat the Vette more than a few times and Rosen always thought he was cheating, great story with pics to follow once he digs them out