Jimbo64

Where do all of these "low" millage vettes come from? Continuallly read about 40 plus year cars with milage under 100k for sale. That averages out for every year since the car's birth of less the 2500 miles being put on it. Do you know of anyone who buys a new vette and puts less then 2500
hundred miles a year on it. In 40 years will todays models all show up as low milage, garage kept stored vintage cars. Have a little problem believing that 50k cars are not really 150/250k restored vehicles. Sometimes we believe what we want to because we want to. Just some pondering thoughts.

harleyreg

Great post! I have the same conversation with people that are selling me their corvettes. Unless they have inspection records that indicate mileage or if they are the original owner I have a real problem with the under 100,000 miles cars.

BarryK

it's my opinion that most of the "original, low milage" cars such as 40k, 50k mile cars really aren't.

first of all, as you said, most people do not put only 2,000, 2,500 miles a year on a new car and back when these cars were new many if not most were daily drivers. I'm sure most of these cars have had the odometers flipped at least once. Now that they are classics and collectible cars we put limited milage on them but I doubt they were driven such few miles back when new.
Second, it seems to be a common "problem' that the odometers break on these older cars and sometimes people don't want to bother fixxing such a minor issue, especially if it keeps milage "off" the car....
Third, a lot of the cars out there are older restorations, maybe 10, 15, 20 year old restorations and I know of a lot of cars that when they were restored the odometer was reset back to zero - after all if a car goes thru a complete body-off restoration and the motor was rebuilt isn't it now essentially a "new" car starting back on day one again? So I'm sure many of these low milage cars could also be falling into that senario.
Sometimes an owner of a car believes it's really a low milage car and therefore sells it that way but he may not know enough about the prior history of a car to realize the "sales pitch" he was given when he bought the car wasn't true. After a number of years enough past history is lost that the lie is than lost and is believed to be truth.
(think about if you had a NOM car, restored it for NCRS judging so had a "restoration" motor installed that was correctly restamped to pass judging. You may than sell the car and was honest about the motor being a restamp replacement. But what if the next owner resells it and only advertises it as "numbers matching" - that owner sell it to someone who than believes he is buying a car that is an original motor car and so do all the next owners down the line).

Unless you are buying the car from the original owner and he has documentation verifying actual milage such as service orders, prior registration cards, etc that can verify it's a true low milage car I wouldn't believe what the odometer says.
I have a '78 I purchased last spring with only 9,489 original miles which normally i'd never believe. I mean really now, only 338 miles a year since new?? But I have copies of almost every service order on the car since new, copies of past registrations, and past titles all of which list the actual miles at each sercive, each registration period, and each change of ownership so in this case I believe the low milage is 100% correct. Otherwise I would never have believed it

buddyepa

I agree with BarryK, but I do have a 2005 C6 with just 5600 miles on it. And my C2 has only accumulated about 500 miles per year since I aquired it 4-5 years ago. It is possible, but unlikely. Also, I have no records of maintenance on the C2 since I do all of the oil changes, etc. Since I have two other vehicles as daily drivers, the Vettes are just for "fun" and do not accumulate many miles except for "fun". The C6, by the way, got 27 mpg on a recent trip to the Knoxville Corvette Expo.

babylonvette

i have a low mileage beauty it was wrecked inlate 60's it sat in a woods for 30 something years got stripped and trashed till someome descovered it figured it was good for parts and draged it out thats where i got it 37560 figure they stole almost everything but left the dash had the gauges rebuilt told them not to touch the mileage but they set it to zero anyway

crw41

These true low milage vehicles are probably limited to 1 or 2 owner cars or the museum pieces.

vetzs

These cars also came thru the era when it was common practice among car dealers to turn back the speedo's.

vintagecorvette

I feel that many are true low milage cars. I have a 1984 Porsche 911 cabriolet with 40000 original miles. I have owned it for over 10 years and have not really driven it in the last 5. Remember Corvettes are considered or were considered fair weather vehicles to many. I know many people who have cars in their garage and never take them out. In our busy lives, it is easy to put something in the garage and forget about it, so in my opinion it is not hard to see why there are so many low milage cars. Don't get me wrong many are fake, but there are certain things that do show up on true.

oWEN

rustyacres2

My 62 has been sitting for 26 years ( now I'm working on it) but it only has 60,000 miles on it.

ctjackster

well, from experience:

take my wife's 1992 Limited Edition Miata, which she bought as a present to herself and already owning a daily driver (this all before I knew her). A beautiful little car, numbered, black on red leather, and never driven in winter, never really driven on rainy days. She also had Huskies, and took them around during her spare time, in her daily driver (Ford Explorer). And then married me, and then we had kids starting in 2001. Sold that Miata in 2003 with 9,000 miles on it, like new. That's 9,000 miles in 11 years.

The point is, the C2 was sometimes not a daily commuter car, and it was priced above the pack so it was sometimes babied and treated just like many Corvettes today. And then they became collectible in the 80s, so a 17 - year old 1965 car was not getting driven as a beater in 1982. My 65 had 52,000 miles on the still-working odometer when I bought it, although the seller was bit skeptical and quite honest so he advertised it as TMU, and I bought it as such. Tracing titles back to 1981 as well as repair reciepts from the past, all of which logged the miles (at title transfer or at time of work) showed these to be original, and speaking with the owner from 1981 - 1996 explained the lack of miles during his ownership - it was a "play toy" car among a few cars the guy owned, and was driven very infrequently (had 42,000 miles or so at title transfer in 1981, that's believable for a 65).

So, while I agree that claims of low original miles need to be backed up with supporting documentation if I am paying a premium based on that fact, it happens . . . . . . .

wombvette

Most odometers on midyears broke somewhere between 30K and 60K miles. That is a prime cause, but there are quite a few examples that are ligitimate low milage vehicles. My 67 SB car broke at about 60K and has never been fixed. It has registered about 4 or five miles less every year on the Inspections report, because the gear in the odeometer works its way around backwards. My 67BB car had 39K on it when I bought it in 1978. It broke shortly thereafter, but was fixed immediately, then broke again 6K later. It was quickly fixed again, this time with a metal gear, and now shows 82K. My 66 car had 37K on it when I bought it about 6 years ago, but it had laid around in a junk yard for 25 years.

sting ry

[QUOTE=The point is, the C2 was sometimes not a daily commuter car, and it was priced above the pack so it was sometimes babied and treated just like many Corvettes today. And then they became collectible in the 80s, so a 17 - year old 1965 car was not getting driven as a beater in 1982. . . . . . . .[/QUOTE]

I agree! Although I'm sure there is a lot of fraud in the case of "low mileage" cars, they really do exist. My 64 coupe has 65,000 original miles. I can say this with certainty because the seller provided me with all the previous registration slips, plus the original window sticker and sales invoice. The titles had the mileage at title transfer. My 87 vert has 40,000 miles on it. I am the second owner and bought it 15 or so years ago with the intent of it being a "toy" and hence the low mileage. I probably drive it 1500-2000 miles a year.


Cheers
Steve

98blackdroptop

i know this is not a vette but i have a 02 bigdog pitbull w/3,300 original miles on it......i have put about 400 miles on it since january of this year...just sits in the garage w/a cover on it.......wish someone would just buy it....its one of those things where its paid for so it doesent really bother me because there are no payments......

98blackdroptop

also,my 98 vette has 25k on it...so about 3k a year!

Ron Miller

A lot of them don't need the odometer turned back. Once it rolls to 100k, it starts all over again. So, once you get past 100,000 miles, you've got an "original low mileage C-2" again!

And that's where a lot of them come from, I believe!!

Tom/99

I have a friend that bought a new 2003 Annaversary conv in September 2002. He has just recently just turned 3,000 miles on it. That comes to about 61 miles a month, for the 49 months he's owned it.

Aussie67L71

Great thread. What's the big deal on mileage anyhow? Isn't it really the condition of the car that counts - and with enough care & $$ these old beauties will last forever, won't they? When I fell in love (yeah, yeah, corney but true) with my '65 the last thing on my mind was the mileage - I would have bought it even if it had 200,000+ miles on the clock. As luck would have it, it had a documented 56K on the clock - and 10yrs later I've just ticked it over at 65K (so I guess it's about to bust?). I too, do all the servicing (minimal - fluids, filters etc) myself, but keep every petrol (gas) reciept with liters (gallons), date and odometer reading - just in case the person my widow sells it to is prepared to pay her a premium, ha, ha. Oh, and my '67 had 84K and is in much better condition than the '65...... Best Regards, Gary (Perth, Australia)

1960fivette

We must also remember that low mileage does not always mean a pampered or surviver type corvette. My 1960 f.i. corvette was raced up the pikes peak hill climb in the stock sports car class by a colorado springs dealer when new, sold to a couple in Denver who drove it for 1 year, sold it to a business man who drove it a total of 1000 miles in ten years, he then sold it to an insurance agent who drove it for less than 1year before one of those dreaded fuelie fires took place. It was then parked with fire damage in a goverment ammunition bunker for 26 years before I bought it in 1999 and began restoring it. About the only advantage with this corvette was the fact that all the original componants were in place with the exception of a replacement radiator. Although it has experienced very few miles or years on the road, it was definately not a pampered/survivor when I got it! I hope it will be back to its former glory next year!

Greg
1960fivette

Harps

Very interesting thread indeed.

My father actually owns two very special low mileage "Survivor" cars, and it has always fascinated me to hear the stories behind the real low mileage cars.

One is a 67' 427/390 Marina Blue vert with 30k original, and unrestored miles on her. It is a true one owner car and the 67 was her "weekend car".

The other is a 72' LS-5 Bryar Blue coupe with only 1,700 original miles. The 72 is simply amazing, and has a even more amazing history to it and how it was actually preserved all of those years. The 72' has every single award it can possibly get (5 Star NCRS, Duntov, Bloomington...etc...) and we've had the 67 Top Flighted twice at Regionals and it has received an invitation to go thru Bowtie judging at Nationals.

Both have tons of documentation (original documents, service records showing mileage, etc...) to go along with their originality. As stated above, this is key to proving their originality, and as the case with our cars, the single owner history helped tremendously.

Rimcrew

I believe that for every true low mileage car, there are twenty (or more) fakes. My Mom has a '66 Mustang convertible that has been sitting in her garage since 1974 - and it has 86,000 miles on it. If it had been driven at all since then it would be on its second trip around the odometer.

I think it was a different time back then and most people drove the cars they bought. IMHO, the only premium in a "low mileage" car is if it is a survivior. Once it is repainted, and major mechanical work has been done, it is no better than any other numbers matching, restored, car - but that's just me...