This 1980 Corvette for sale on Craigslist reminds me of my first Corvette — although not necessarily for a reason I’d like to remember.
Not long after buying my red-on-red Corvette, I drove it to cover a high school basketball game. When I came back outside afterward, I discovered that the truck parked in front of me had backed over the nose of my beloved car.
I’d owned it only a few weeks.
Fortunately, a friend of mine owned a body shop and repaired and painted the nose. A few weeks later, he tracked me down and told me to bring the car back.
Nothing had happened to it. He simply wasn’t satisfied.
He didn’t think the new paint matched the rest of the car quite well enough, so he wanted to paint it again.
I thought about that story when I saw the photos of this 1980 Corvette, currently offered for $19,500 with a claimed 17,348 original miles.
The car looks remarkably well preserved, but its nose appears to need some attention. Whether it’s splotchy paint, a big scratch, or simply the photos is difficult to determine, but the front bumper doesn’t seem to match the otherwise impressive condition of the car.
Then again, if a questionable nose is the biggest complaint you can make about a 46-year-old Corvette, there probably isn’t much to complain about.
And there is plenty here to like.
The Corvette is finished in Dark Claret Metallic with a matching interior, a combination that looks particularly good on the flowing lines of the C3. Chevrolet reportedly built 3,451 Corvettes in the color for 1980.
More important is what’s underneath the hood.
This Corvette has the optional L82 350-cubic-inch V8, rated at 230 horsepower and 275 lb-ft of torque. It was the most powerful engine available in the 1980 Corvette and cost buyers an additional $595.
Only 5,069 buyers chose the L82, and 1980 marked the end of the line for an engine that had become the performance choice during some lean years for American horsepower.
By today’s standards, 230 horsepower doesn’t sound particularly impressive. But you have to judge the L82 in the context of its time.
Corvette, like virtually every American performance car, had spent the 1970s being squeezed by emissions requirements and other changes. Horsepower numbers that had been commonplace only a decade earlier disappeared.
The Corvette was still selling — Chevrolet built more than 40,000 of them for 1980 — but the fire-breathing performance of the muscle-car era was becoming a distant memory.
The L82 was essentially the last man standing from that earlier era, and 1980 would be its final appearance.
This one is backed by a three-speed automatic, the only transmission offered with the L82 that year. It also came well equipped, with glass roof panels, aluminum wheels, air conditioning, power windows, power locks and cruise control among its features.
But the odometer is what really gets your attention.
The seller claims just 17,348 original miles.
There apparently isn’t documentation offered to verify that figure, so a prospective buyer would want to investigate the mileage carefully. Still, the condition shown in the photos makes the claim believable.
The interior is especially convincing. The seats don’t appear to show the bolster wear you’d expect from a heavily used C3, while the dash, gauges and other surfaces appear unusually well preserved.
The seller describes the car as tight and rattle-free — two words that don’t always find their way into the same sentence as “C3 Corvette.”
Then there’s that nose.
Interestingly, paint problems on the flexible front and rear bumper covers aren’t exactly unheard of on Corvettes of this vintage. One commenter looking at the car called it a “typical soft nose paint” issue and said he’d simply drive the car as it sits.
Another recalled a saying that seems particularly appropriate:
“There are only two kinds of Corvettes. Ones that need paint jobs. And ones that have just had paint jobs.”
That made me laugh.
After my experience with my first Corvette, I understand exactly what he means.
The bigger question is whether $19,500 is the right number. That’s enough money that I’d want the claimed mileage verified, and I’d certainly take a close look at that front bumper before handing over a check.
But a 17,000-mile C3 in an attractive color, loaded with options and carrying the final-year L82 under its hood isn’t something you stumble across every day.
And if the nose does need painting, I learned a long time ago that finding the right body man can solve that problem.
Just make sure he’s happy with the color match the first time.
Source:
Craigslist.org via BarnFinds.com
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Corvettes for Sale: 18K-Mile 1990 Corvette ZR-1 Offered on Bring a Trailer
Corvettes for Sale: 62-Years-Owned 1963 Corvette Split Window Offered on BaT
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An ’80 C3 with a questionable paint job and an automatic for nearly 20k? I’m afraid that as pros and cons go, there are simply not enough pros to justify the price.
Full disclosure: even though I have owned a Corvette of some flavor for the past 60 years, ’75 through ’96 are just something that I can’t abide, (even though I owned a ’75 as well as a ’94, both roadster’s)
I can relate to your heartbreak with your C3. My first Corvette was an orange 77 L-82 that I loved. I had it repainted. Just two days after getting it back from the paint shop a guy backed over the nose of it with his pickup truck in a McDonald’s parking lot. He scraped it right at the peak line in the middle of the front bumper but luckily he didn’t go back far enough to hit any of the fiberglass. My car painter still had enough of my paint left and after he repaired and resprayed my bumper you couldn’t even tell it. I was totally happy with it again when I got it back.
$20k buys a decent C5.
I had an 80 and a 81, both slow as turtles but absolutely best looking cars on the road. Wish I would of kept the 81, the 80 got stolen and stripped to the frame rails.
[…] Corvettes for Sale: 17K-Mile 1980 Corvette with L82 […]
I ordered a 1980 Corvette with the L82 in November of 1979, it didn’t arrive until May of 1980 as they build many of the L82 equiped cars in large groups later in the model run. I had a ’79 L82 also, they were quick enough to best most other cars of the era. I was a GM employee so we got a nice 25% discount on Corvette & Cadillac.
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