Tally Ho

The bottom line is this car is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it be it $20K or $100K. It might be worth a few more bucks if it were one of the 200 or so L82 four speed cars with leather interior.

I remember an 8 mile L82 auto with leather that went across the B-J auction block back in 94 when they still allowed reserves. It bid to around $27K and stalled. It was a no sale.

There's an L82 four speed with 13K miles local to me that has not sold with an asking of $39K.

brent319

Cars like this amaze me. I can't imagine owning one. It would take a lot of money to get it to where you could drive it, but you would not want to drive it since the unique part of the car is that it has no miles on it. I guess if you had enough money that you had other cool cars you could drive, and park this one, admire it, and start it up once in a while.
Cool as hell car, though.

Paul Borowski

...I know if I owned it, it'd get driven. Even if you only put 1,000mi per year on it, in 10yrs it's only have 10,013mi on it and it'd STILL be a "low mileage" car.

...myself, I'd rather have the "rarer" L-48 4spd Pace Cars.

...seriously, it's only a 1978 Corvette. It's not like it's a Ferrari, Bentley or Rolls Royce...

Ret.Horsecop13

80Baby

Tom, yes... it was a very cool thing for you to do to put up this post. I found it to be incredibly interesting. Thanks. Now I'll go downstairs and mentioned it to my Heavy Duty mechanic; we both own Vettes and he'll get a kick out of it.

Back to the car... a question was asked "What would it take to make the car road worthy again?" Tom, has the buyer disclosed his plans for the car to you? If the car is to be used as a Sunday driver, it'll still need work. Maybe the car isn't bleeding fluids right now, but it'll start once it's back on the road. And there will be other issues as well.

I agree with a previous comment that the '78 Pace Car replica is not such a rare commodity. Heck, there were less '80 Vettes built with a 4-speed than Pace Car replicas, so does that make my '80 more valuable? Geez, I could only hope... Still, this is a very neat find and a great story.

SBR

I agree. I know of an 81 mile L82 four speed Pace car. Half of the miles were done to achieve the Bloomington Gold benchmark award. I am 99.99% sure that he would sell his for 100K.

wgarneau

Does he still have the plastic on the seats, the window sticker on the window, etc? If he does it brings the value of this 13 mile one down considerably - particularly since your friend's is an automatic.

If not..I used to have an original copy of Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti that had never been used and that still had the uncut cellophane on it with the price tag from Flipside Records. It was worth at the time a couple thousand dollars. When I sold it I asked what it was worth if the cellophane was cut. The guy said twenty bucks.

These car's are no different. The difference between being worth one value and another value several times less can be trivial as far as the actual car is concerned. With the record it was that the record had never been listened to or even opened. Cut the cellophane and now you can inspect the record to see what kind of shape it is in. With the cellophane uncut, it could have a factory defect and you'd never know. But it's rarity that makes the one worth more than the other - not condition.

dboz

Something tells me that $1 worth of plastic does not translate to $50k extra in price to a collector. They are usually pretty smart guys.

wgarneau

I guess you'd say the same thing about the cellophane on the record. Nobody cares about the actual plastic. They care about what that piecemof plastic says about the use of the car. It translates to "this has not been touched enough to rip the plastic on the seats".

Most people don't care, but those that do - they care a great deal.

Your problem is that you look at the market only from your own perspective and ignore anything about anyone for whom the market is a very different place. You don't think 'original' is worth more than 'restored' and so to you they are not. If they are to someone else, you ignore it.

dboz

I look at the record story the same way with the Corvette. Why buy something you can't ever use or it will ruin the value? Anyone can sit on the crackling plastic that covers those seats. If it was such a good idea to leave it on, dealers would not remove it. Most do not want to sit on plastic. If you are going to pay more for that aspect, you are truly an unusual buyer of the car. Most buy a car to drive. This is just an oddity.

...Roger...

Yep that's true. My brother bought my daughter a collector Barbie doll when she was 6, for Christmas, and insisted she leave it in the plastic.

srs244

and most here took it in the spirit it was intended, i think you would agree.

wgarneau

It's odd to me too, and frankly when the Survivor crowd starts calling restorations 'vandalism' and says that we should not have the right to do what we want with our own property - there are some nuts out there who actually believe that crap.

Cars deteriorate if they are not maintained. Any group that penalizes maintenance and upkeep I have no time for. You should see some of the crap they go through trying to salvage parts that really should be replaced - like calipers.

But I'd sure love to stumble on a car to sell them - just as I sold that record.

wgarneau

I think we all were originally, but once everyone said 'cool' that spirit pretty much ran it's course. Plus I think it was perfectly natural for someone to ask what that car was worth. On this forum we can't agree on values for the measurable portion of a specific part of the Corvette market. Once you get outside the normal part of the distribution into that .009th percentile anything can happen.

If I offended anyone I apologize. Someone asked value and I took a shot at an answer - starting by pointing out that with something like this it's impossible to say.

RedZR

My sister had a rare Barbie doll also. It was called "Divorce Barbie" because it came with all of Ken's stuff

Sorry Roger- I could not help myself!

wgarneau

I had a GI Joe. He caused the divorce by sleeping with Barbie and promising to marry her if she led Ken. Then she left Ken and GI Joe didn't want her anymore...

REMIX

Too funny.

Here is the classified section from a 1978 Vette Views magazine. Sellers were asking premiums for these cars - $21,500 then is $74,817.69 today based on my CPI calculator. So, even if they could get $40k for this "time capsule", it's still 50% less than what it probably originally cost, not to mention the cost of storage and possibly insurance over the years. What a waste.

PS: A 78 SA was my first car...I have a ton of these old Vette Views. This is the ONLY period in time you would ever see a 78 Pace car worth more than a 70 LT-1 roadster or a 65 fuelie.

noonie

What month was the magazine issue?

REMIX

I want to say August-ish.

Here are some more pages.

noonie

Those guys were a dollar late and a day short or whatever that saying is.
Prior to the race, the pace cars were getting those prices in the mag ads.
The week after the race they dropped like a rock back down to list price.
Absolutely no idea why it happened so abruptly. A month after the race, at Bloomington, there were dozens for sale and not selling at all, not even at list price. Hanging owners covered them for years in hopes of a revival that never happened. Only thing worse were the guys that paid 25 grand for one.

I remember that period very well. Planned on going to that race, but had to cancel the last minute.