zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Buying
/
At $13,500, Would You 'Pickup' This Custom 1979 Chevy Corvette?
At $13,500, Would You 'Pickup' This Custom 1979 Chevy Corvette?-February 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:09:51

Today’s Corvette is for those of you who love all things Chevy, and lament the passing of that marque’s El Camino. Will you feel the same love for this custom’s price? Let’s find out.

Somewhere in the world there is a crazy car collector whose singular goal is to obtain one of every model of Chrysler’s long dead Eagle brand. I’d wager that there’s likely a Geo collector out there too, and if we could find both of these nuts, we could cage-match ‘em!

Anyway, back to the Eagle’s nest. That hypothetical collector of the moribund marque would truly be a global investor since Chrysler almost literally went to the ends of the Earth to fill out the brand’s line up. Well okay, they went to France, the U.S. of A. and Japan, but you get my point.

One of Eagle’s Japan-sourced cars was represented yesterday by a , a funky little wart in ‘90s green and sporting both a sliding door and AWD. With its dings and dents and questionably ill-fitting hood, our Summit wasn’t quite show ready. It did look like a decent foundation for that Eagle collection, though. Its $3,000 price tag was also pretty decent looking, at least it was to the 66-percent of you who awarded it with a Nice Price win.

By now you’ve no doubt seen . The test cars are of course clad in a heavy draping of camouflage, but the proportions—short cab-forward nose and a long tail—are given clues to the engine location on the new car.

That is, unless of course, there’re not. What if instead of a mid-engine Corvette this new car is a front-engine Corvette with incredible drivetrain packaging, and an El Camino bed in back? Huh? Huh? Wouldn’t that be a plot twist worthy of an M Night Shyamalan movie? And I mean one of the good ones like Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, not the terrible ones like everything else.

That Corvette-amino is a long shot, and for those of you who can’t wait for such an amazing confluence of beloved Chevy archetypes to emerge, we have a custom C3 ‘Vette that’s almost as good.

This has been heavily customized in a distinctly ‘70s fashion. Don’t think Corvette Summer, this is more like Corvette Winter of Our Discontent. The car has been converted from a factory bubble-back coupe to a hard tonneau’d pickup with a vinyl covered formal roofline. Seriously, when have you ever seen vinyl-covered T-tops before? Fawn-say!

Behind that, the center section of the sloping tail has been raised and fitted with a wood-floored pickup bed. The grey vinyl covering extends to the top of the lift-up lid for this commodious storage compartment. The ‘Vette’s traditional pop-up lamps have been replaced by four deeply inset small headlights, and the nose badge has been removed. Silver over purple paint gets offset by huge lake pipes and polished deep dish wheels. Overall it looks competently done and to be in seemingly great condition.

The interior is… seemingly completely stock. There is an AM/FM/CD Steroid noted in the ad and sounds intriguing.

The drivetrain however, does keep the crazy train on the tracks. It’s described as a freshly rebuilt and fuel injected LS6 454. Behind that sits a Turbo 400 with an equally clean bill of health, while out back there’s a 373 positraction rear end to contend with what those pieces up front can dole out. The odometer reads a modest 55K and the car comes with a clean title.

Okay look, I know YOU most likely wouldn’t drive this crazy Corvette with a ten-foot pole. It’s totally someone else’s closely held personal vision, and maybe you’re more of a traditionalist who goes out of their way to avoid the trappings of flamboyance. This custom is like Disco Stu and maybe you’re more comfortable emulating Ned Flanders—just not the stupid sexy one.

I honestly don’t know the cut of your jib, but I do know that we need to vote on this car’s $13,500 price, and not from the perspective of our own personal taste, but from the cold hard analytical point of view of what the market will bear.

With that in mind, what’s your take on this custom Corvette and that $13,500 asking? Does that price make this Chevy worth the pickup? Or, is it too far down the rabbit hole to ask so much?

You decide!

Prescott, AZ , or go if the ad disappears.

H/T to Roman Bernal for the hookup!

Help me out with NPOCP. Click to send a me a fixed-price tip, and remember to include your Kinja handle.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Buying
For $3,200, Is This S-10 a Ten?
For $3,200, Is This S-10 a Ten?
The fact that today's Chevy S-10 has a 500 CID Caddy V8 in back means that the only thing it'll haul is ass. Does its price however, mean a buyer would also be taking it, well, you know where? Confession time, I was trolling with yesterday's freaky . Of course...
Feb 11, 2026
For $50,000, Should This Alfa Get Its Freak On?
For $50,000, Should This Alfa Get Its Freak On?
The compound word Prototype comes from the Greek prototypon which means primitive form. Today's Alfa GTV is described as such a proto type, but is its price far from either pro or typical? When it was completed, Tod Browning's 1932 film Freaks was banned from exhibition due to its lurid...
Feb 11, 2026
2014 Aston Martin Vanquish: The Jalopnik Review
2014 Aston Martin Vanquish: The Jalopnik Review
Movies tell us that international spies only drive their cars for 20 minutes, max, before they blow up. Can Aston Martin build a flagship grand tourer you'd want to keep longer than that? ( Aston Martin wanted us to drive the Vanquish so bad, that they flew me to New...
Feb 11, 2026
For $8,000, Will This Jeep Be The Torque Of The Town?
For $8,000, Will This Jeep Be The Torque Of The Town?
While there's nothing more American than a Jeep, diesel engines seem more the predilection of our funny talkin' friends overseas. Today's Wrangler attempts to link those worlds, but is its price a bridge too far? In the Mission Impossible movies the protagonists frequently pulled off their schemes with the help...
Feb 11, 2026
The 15 Best-Reviewed Cars Of 2012
The 15 Best-Reviewed Cars Of 2012
We launched our new review system this year by claiming that and we'd do our best to fix them. Our solution? A new format that gives a tangible number enthusiast's could use to decide how worthy a vehicle was of ownership. Our staff has managed to put approximately 40 new...
Feb 11, 2026
For $2,500, If The Shoe Fits, Drive It
For $2,500, If The Shoe Fits, Drive It
The lyrics to the metalcore band On Broken Wings' song Six Hundred Cubic Centimeters includes the line- I've got some questions, and I want them answered. That song is obviously about today's Honda Z600 coupe, and the question they want answered is undoubtably whether or not its price is a...
Feb 11, 2026
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved