[VIDEO] This Guy Fell for an Auction ‘Corvette Scam’ and it Nearly Cost Him $30K

Oct 3, 2024

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[VIDEO] This Guy Fell for an Auction 'Corvette Scam' and it Nearly Cost Him $30K

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

That’s one of the most valuable lessons many of us have learned the hard way during our life.

A YouTuber known as Samcrac, who says on his channel that he loves cars and chickens, recently shared a tale about his recent nightmare purchase of a C6 Z06 on an online auction.

The black 2009 Z06 was rated as a 4.7 out of 5.0, so when the auction ended at $28,800 with Samcrac as the winner, he initially chalked it up to being “super lucky” or “maybe it was a quiet day on a no-reserve auction” since similar cars usually sell for close to $50,000.

But a big pile of problems then ensued, starting with just trying to simply get the car off the dealer’s lot after the shipping company driver allegedly damaged the clutch for the six-speed manual transmission by using it to jump off a truck on his rollback with a dead battery.

Further inspection by a nearby buddy mechanic found that the original 505-horsepower LS7 engine had been replaced at some point with a less powerful LS3 on base models. The car also seems to have been well used on the track and even showed prior frame damage, among other problems.

Samcrac took his case to arbitration, but despite what seem to be strong arguments, he wound up losing because the arbitrator said that the replacement engine was allowed on a car of that age and furthermore it was replaced by a GM engine.

Fortunately, this story still manages to have a happy ending because the car was covered by something known as a Deal Shield, which provides a 100 percent refund if it’s returned with a certain time period. By the way, before the car was apparently purchased by the selling dealer, it had been rated a 1.7 (Rough) at another auction a few weeks earlier.

“This entire situation was more of a time waste than anything,” Samcrac concludes. “I felt by at least sharing this story, hopefully it will help some of you be aware of these problems, which seem to be more prevalent than I thought among auction Corvettes.”