1973 Chevrolet Corvette 454 "Barn Find" - Hide My Checkbook

 

The third generation or what is now known colloquially as the "C3" Chevrolet Corvette is as famous for perpetuating if not embodying and exacerbating a certain stereotype as it is for it's "Flash Gordon" plastic body. To us fans of them we often times find ourselves rowing against preconceived notions exhausting ourselves as we attempt to defend our vehicle choices to those who think we're having some sort of mid-life crisis. Even within the comforts of the like minded there's lively discussion about whether the early "3's" were better than later models. Which takes us to our "bard find", 1973 454, 4-speed car here I found for sale on Craigslist. If ever if there was a car caught in between, it's a 1973 Corvette.

What makes the '73's unique from other "C3's" is their bumpers. Sound trivial? Not really when it comes to early to mid 1970's cars sold in the United States. Starting in 1973, all new vehicles sold  here were required to have bumpers that could withstand a five-mile per hour impact without the vehicle suffering any damage. Again, that might sound inconsequential but the end result was often times garish chrome logs that seemed like afterthoughts on existing designs. On the 1973 Corvette, Chevrolet covered up the front bumper with a rubberized polyurethane housing. While many would say that it worked aesthetically, much like today's cars, these bumper covers can't withstand the impact of a slow moving child's bicycle without requiring surgery and a total respray. Somehow they were federally compliant. While the mandate called for the safety-bumpers on the rear of cars come 1974, the rear end of cars was exempt for 1973. Thus, the 1973 Corvette has a rubber nose and the '68-'72 Corvette's delicate and equally useless dual chrome rear bumper.

No. That will not buff out. And you either love the '73's or you're at best ambivalent towards them. Personally, I'm not a fan of the party up front business in back or vice versa mantra going on with the '73's. I'm an all or nothing kind of girl preferring the small bumperette '68-'72's or even the 1974 - 1982's with their fully covered bumpers. Any charms of the imbalanced design of the '73's is lost on me. While the '73 Corvettes have their fans, apparently I'm not alone with my malaise either given that values of '73's are a good third less than '68-'72's. Yes, values of the '73's are a good third more than anything after 1973 but less is still less.

Which takes us back to our '73 bard find here. Now, the owner or the lister of this car  wouldn't be the first person to think they were sitting on a pot of gold with their old car but let's be reasonable. Yes, it's a 1973 Corvette with a 4-speed and 454 but...it...needs...everything. Body work, paint, engine, interior, suspension. With any old car it's always best to buy a restored car than to buy a basket case (like this) and fund the resto yourself because you'll never get your money back on it. Or even come close to breaking even. And in the case of this thing, the point of entry is so out of this world ridiculous that you might as well move onto something else. In fact, anything else.

Sidebar - being the proud owner of a 1977 "C3" that's currently not road-going, not piling stuff on top of it as a makeshift shelf takes some discipline. So, to that end I understand the stuff on the car but only to a point. This isn't the first old car on CL I've seen that's for sale that's also been turned into a makeshift junk drawer. Or table.

The good here is this is a 1973 Corvette with a 454 and a 4-speed. The bad is the that's about the only thing this has going for it. If you're wondering, it's been repainted in the 1978 twenty-fifth anniversary Corvette color scheme. Makes no sense here in 2020 but doing my best to look at this car through a late '70's lens, the paint job must have been an attempt to update the look of it; the older chrome bumper Corvette's, even the '73's, looking old and stale in comparison to the later models.  Oh, did I mention this thing also hasn't run since the first term of the Clinton administration?

I love the Trumpian hubris of some Craiglist and Facebook Marketplace listings and this listing is right up there. The owner claiming that in Hemmings Motors News these big block cars are selling for between thirty-five and eighty-five thousand and that's why he doesn't want to hear from you if you're not coming with an offer of at least twenty-grand. Somebody, please, hide my checkbook.

Much has been said about cars in the early 1970's losing much of their punch having their compression ratios hacked so they could run smoothly on no-lead gas and emission plumbing robbing horsepower as well. That's true  to a some extent but Chevrolet was able to keep the horsepower and torque thieves away with the 454 engine they put in the 1973 Corvette.

The beast that was RPO code "LS4" was still knocking down two-hundred seventy five horsepower and three-hundred ninety-five foot pounds of torque in 1973. Those are net numbers too. While the mighty LS7 454 available in the 1970 was rated at four-hundred sixty horsepower, keep in mind that's a gross horsepower rating. Starting in 1972 manufacturers went to net horsepower ratings which were approximately forty percent less than the gross ratings. So, subtract forty-percent off the the mighty "LS7" and we get...two-hundred seventy six.

If you're interested here's the listing. Ask them if for an opening bid of twenty-grand if they'll throw in all the junk.