The Story Behind The Ultra-Rare 4-Door C3 Corvette And Why It Exists

some things just sound so wrong like clam flavored tomato juice and reverse mortgages but sadly exist in the automotive World nobody ever asked for a Ferrari station wagon and yet the 1965 330 GT 2 plus2 shooting brake sports wagon was built maybe the most wrong sounding thing out there is a four-door Chevrolet Corvette and you guessed it that is something that also exists not only does it sound weird it seems impossible to slap a couple of extra doors on vet that barely has enough room for two adults but it became a reality in 1980 the oddest thing about this Franken vet is that it wasn't the result of a garage mechanic with too much time and money on his or her hands rather the four-door Corvette C3 was an officially sanctioned and financed General Motors project they didn't do it in-house but it was a real company initiative nonetheless not every idea is a winner and sometimes outside of the box thinking yields greatness but some things are so obviously d doomed to failure a four-door Corvette is one of those things while the quadrupled door vet probably never even looked distinctive on paper smush faced dogs like pugs and boxers are so ugly they are cute and a four-door Corvette is so wrong it ended up being right on unfortunately this radical feat of engineering was a complete failure and only a handful were ever built the story of how the ultra rare C3 Corvette got some extra doors however is quite interesting in the late 1970s disco was King rainbow suspenders were cool and people spent good money on Pet Rocks which is to say it was a weird time General Motors wanted in on the weirdness and came up with the idea of making a 4-door version of the Corvette C3 for whatever reason GM didn't have the stomach to produce this unusual sedan themselves so they contracted California custom coach in Pasadena California to both design and build them many outlets have erroneously reported that this was a 1979 Corvette base but the front bumper is clearly from a 1980c 3 which was the first year for the redesigned front end it turns out there wasn't a whole lot of Designing involved as simply cut up two vets and welded them back together the first donor Corvette lost the trunk while the second lost the engine and when they were paired it was a four-door sedan with a sloping Corvette front end Corvette blogger reported that the car was a full 30 in longer than a stock Corvette but amazingly it only added 500 lb to the overall weight of the vehicle still the extra length which was added entirely to the wheelbase must have made it about as agile as a stretch limo after getting over the initial shock of the sheer length of the Corvette America it looked unique and managed to retain the sexy lines of a third generation vet it just had a couple of extra doors those those four doors resulted in another Nifty design element in that the car had double the removable t-tops which presumably would make it an htop or perhaps a character from The Mandarin alphabet top those two extra doors also gave the Corvette a b-pillar which was badged with the America logo in a sweet 80s retro font another interesting feature was the entry system the Corvette America had no exterior door handles opting instead for a keypad mounted on the driver's side window that unlocked and opened the doors electronically everything else was the same as a normal Corvette from the interior to the engine and that last thing was the only real knock on this otherwise inventive ride the late '70s and into the early 80s was the age of the detuned engine and the most powerful available in a 80 vet only produced 225 horsepower the Corvette America came with a 195 horsepower L48 engine GM's initial plan was to Commission California custom coach to build 4 4door Corvette America cars not just in total but each year there was hope that this would be an ongoing project with multiple model years but it wasn't meant to be there are dozens of estimates on the internet as to how many were actually built some as high as 10 but GM Authority reports that only six were produced and they as their name would suggest are somewhat of an authority on GM matters one of the six was a prototype and the other five were allegedly sold to the public with the Rarity of these vehicles as well as them being Corvette variants one would think that they would be enshrined in museums or fetching Top Dollar on auction sites but they're actually kind of elusive and forgotten one was listed on eBay Motors back in 2017 but the auction has since expired and it's unclear if it even sold or for how much another was for sale at NBS Auto in Milpitas California for $125 62 but that dealer's website no longer exists so it's unknown if it actually sold a poster on Corvette forum claims Jay Leno has one of the four-door vets but no corroborating evidence can be found it does however seem exactly like something Leno would have in his garage so we'll rate that as plausible GM ultimately canceled the four-door Corvette American because it was ridiculously overpriced coming in with a sticker price of over $35,000 that was $135 $ 5,435 in today's dollars and way too much to pay for a novelty car at the time a base model Corvette only ran around $133,000 and a fully optioned one was $1 4,354 in a weird twist of fate this incredibly rare Corvette has not appreciated in value at all it cost the equivalent of $135,000 and the only known recent price tag for one was $122,000 $562 so it not only hasn't kept up with inflation but also decreased in value to put that into perspective a 1967 Corvette Stingray originally retailed at $4,388 which is $1,660 of dollars putting four doors on a vet wasn't a bad idea just not at Ferrari prices driving one of these would have been a definite Conversation Piece just because of how unusual the car was but then again pulling up in a Magnum PI 308 gtsi Quattro valvo would have gotten just as much attention the extra door performance car concept was solid and ahead of its time as Chrysler made a four-door Dodge Charger prototype decades later which eventually led to the top selling charger Sports sedan the only thing that doesn't make sense in all of this is why the Corvette America isn't more collectible and valued as a killer piece of Chevy history for

Channel: American Legends

Views: 115,296

Keywords: c3 corvette, corvette stingray, corvette, 4-Door C3 Corvette

Id: YQIKniwrid0

Length: 7min 6sec (426 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024