KenSny

I see more and more posts, and ads for C3s someone is looking at. Funny how they almost all have 20, 30, 40, thousand miles on them.

What a miracle that GM made all these cars that nobody drove.

Serial Steve

Unfortunately, they roll over at 100k, so it's not always so easy. I've seen some '40k' mile cars that look like they've driven to the sun and back.
Twice.

jnb5101

When these cars were daily drivers, they probably had 10K miles per year put on them. That means that after a few years they were placed in hermetically sealed storage until they were miraculously discovered recently. All rust free and with matching numbers.

Tooonz

Our car said 71K on the odometer, the title said 71K. looking at the car it was a hard 71K. wasn't maintained very well and had a color change along the way. both exterior and interior. Not the original engine either. Hard life for a 71K car.
But when I did the front end over, the thing that puzzled me was it had the original ball joints, and the front rotors were still riveted on. I find it hard to imagine the ball joint would go 170K, they were still in great shape, I just didn't want to take a chance and rebuilt it all. All in all it's a driver for us, it was never a museum piece.

bashcraft

What's more astonishing is that people actually believe it even though the cars look like they've gone through a war.

rcread

My parents have a '77 that they bought new. It now has 19,000 miles on it. My Dad bought it for my mom and she didn't like it because she is only 4'11" and couldn't see out of it. I drove it a little in high school on sunny days, but I had a 4-speed '77 Trans Am that was a lot faster. It's in good, original shape but time alone can take its toll on a car.

KenSny

I agree totally. People forget about the speedo rolling over & WANT to believe it's true.

Unless you can see a paper trail of maintenence & such, these "low mileage" cars going for big bucks are just smoke & mirrors.

And it is SUPER easy to roll back these speedos.

Navy01Coupe

My 1970 has 56k miles on it now.
The same as the day I bought it 2 years ago.


Maybe I should fix the odometer so it works?

Faster Rat

The mileage on a 33 to 47 year old car is, for all practical purposes, completely irrelevant. What it is, what has or has not been done to it and what condition it is in are far more important. In order to be safely driven, most everything will need to have been or still need to be dealt with.

LS4 PILOT

Most you have to be very skeptical of I'd sayid the claim mileage is too low to be believed. Although low miles ones rarely driven do pop up from time to time.

Many parts are victims of age , not driving so much. Plastic s dry out.

A car can have 150,000miles still be nice and look like new if maintained and garaged in a proper garage.

My car been driven a lot , being a convertible they seem to suffered more on the whole . But mine has been in a garage 27 years . That didn't stop the urethane bumpers from just falling off sitting in the garage.

The performance and four speed model cars were usually thrashed worse than the auto low HP secretary drivers.

After so many years it becomes unimportant in most cases.

Condition is prime.

bashcraft

It should be, but people are paying premiums for low mileage cars that aren't low mileage.

Mod75

My 75 one owner has about 47000 on it.

When talking to people they just assume it has rolled over

bashcraft

How many of these cars are one owner?

Blue79

She's at 124,000mi. and still rolling, thanks to me. Lots 'o fun too.

softwarejanitor

My 1980 C3 has 75k original miles on it... How do I know it isn't 176k? When I bought it in 2000 the original rotors on all four wheels were still riveted in place. They did that at the factory to make installation easier. You have to drill the rivets out of the rotors to take them off to turn them. The rotors had not been turned because they still had plenty of meat left on them. Nobody other than the most strict purists re-rivets the rotors since it isn't necessary. This car is not an NCRS purist candidate so I'm pretty sure the rotors are original. FWIW, I've put less than 2000 miles a year on it on average since I bought it, although a lot of that is that when I moved 1000 miles it was trailered and it sat in the garage a number of years before I started restoring it last year.

Priya

There's a lot more of these cars with under 100,000 miles than there would be for most other cars. Reason being unlike most cars a lot of people bought these cars more as a toy than as needed transportation. They were used for pleasure driving mostly and didn't see a lot of miles. That continued to be true even over a number of subsequent owners.

My 79 showed 60k when I bought it and given the pristine condition of the interior I believe that to be original. I, like the previous owner and probably the first owner before her bought the car as a pleasure vehicle and I've put about 2k miles on it since I bought it six years ago.

Capkunu

My '76 had 85.5 miles on the clock and I believe they're accurate. I had enough records/reg paper available to go back to the 1st owner - three before me. From what I could ascertain (largely by informed guesswork), what you said above was true in my case, and a factor in the purchase.

LT1M21Vette

My 11 yo winter daily has 75k miles. The C3 has 60k miles.

Conclusion: none...

Tom73

My 73 is a three owner 50,000 mile car. Original owner used it as a daily driver which is where most of the miles came from. The second owner and I have not driven it that much. I basiclly parked it when it hit 50k. Prior to that it did make a trip from Austin to Bloomington Gold. Car has no idea what rust is, first owner was in Tucson, second in San Diego, and I am in Austin.

Iceaxe

From my experience the two biggest lies told by C3 sellers.... yes, those are the original miles... the AC just needs to be recharged.... YMMV