Feel The Pain: 1966 Chevrolet Corvette Project
It’s not just the cars, it’s the stories. This is yet another, basket-case mid-year Corvette project car. I chose this one to write up because I empathize, I feel the guy’s pain.
This car is located in Stuart, Florida, appears here on eBay, and the current price as of this writing, is $16,900 with the reserve not met. Paraphrasing, the seller’s story is as follows:
The current seller chased this car for eight years. The previous owner had hopped up the engine, and wrecked it within a few weeks of finishing it. With the exception of the damage, the rest of the car was still nice. The current seller begged the previous owner at the time to sell it to him. “Not for sale” was always the response.
He kept after him for eight years. He tells how the man kept it in the garage for a few years, and then after awhile relegated it to outside storage under a carport and a series of constantly deteriorating car covers and tarps. Gradually, it was exposed to the central coast Florida elements, and went further downhill from there.
This is a story the likes of which most of us have heard many times before. Where I can really relate to it personally, is the next chapter:
The seller says he has decided to let it go, because of his many other projects. None of us will live forever, and lots of us have more “fun” projects than we could finish in only one lifetime. He wants to invest the proceeds from this Corvette to his Rolls Royce projects.
I feel this pain, because I recently let go of one of my ’63 Impalas. I loved it as much as the day I bought it, but there comes a day when it’s finally time to acknowledge that a project has stalled, and maybe everyone is better off to let somebody new, someone with a fresh perspective take over. Someone who may be currently better prepared than we are to forge ahead with it.
I completely bought the seller’s story. Can you? The seller says the car was originally silver. He doesn’t mention specifically, but I suspect the drivetrain is not original. So this is where you come in. With your fresh perspective, would you restore this car to numbers-matching originality? Or take it in a different direction? Did you ever choose to let go of a car simply because you had too many others and it broke your heart to watch it deteriorate? Tell us everything, below.
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Comments
I’m calling BS on this. Only 15 Corvettes were built with an M22. I’m betting this ain’t one of them.
Ummm, this was listed before for huge money, and they would not post pics of the front end.
And now you can see why!
And here it is on September 06/2016.
http://barnfinds.com/1966-corvette-with-too-much-power/
Yeah…I remember it now. Good catch Jay. Unfortunately, the car hasn’t improved any.
I’m surprised out how many times the same car is reposted here within just a few weeks of each other. Is it because there are multiple independent posters here with no centralized editors?
Not complaining, just curious.
With 9 writers who are spread all over the country working on posts, it gets a little hard for me to keep track of absolutely every find. I read every post and check for errors, plus try to keep from having the same find posted multiple times, but with 12 posts a day, 7 days a week, that works out to something like 4k cars per year to keep track of. So yeah duplicates are going to happen once in a while.
Thanks for the explanation, Josh.
WE all really appreciate the hard work that must go into this on a non-stop daily basis.
If anything, the duplicates prove that you are all on the same wavelength and know what your readers will enjoy.