Is this four-door C3 Corvette worth $214,000?

09 November 2018

If rumors of a four-door Mustang didn’t cause your head to spin and fall onto the floor, there’s a car in California you might be interested in. NBS Auto Showroom is selling a four-door Corvette built in 1980, and it can be yours for the majestic sum of $214,884.

Here’s the catch—the ad is misleading in characterizing this Vette as factory original. As Jalopnik pointed out back in 2010, it’s actually one of five examples (plus one prototype) that was modified by California Custom Coach. According to the ad, it’s one of two still in existence.

The unusual Vette—definitely not the Little Red Corvette that Prince sang about—has a wheelbase that’s 30 inches longer than a standard C3, adding more than 500 pounds of heft. When new, it carried a $35,000 price tag, which was more than 2.5 times the price of a conventional model. (That’s equates to about $112,500 today.)

1980 Chevrolet Corvette four door rear 3/4 — 1980 Chevrolet Corvette four door NBS Auto Showroom

1980 Chevrolet Corvette four door t tops off — 1980 Chevrolet Corvette four door NBS Auto Showroom

The four-door Corvette is equipped with a 350-cubic-inch V-8 and automatic transmission. According to the NBS listing, it has 20,000 original miles and is “numbers-matching from the carburetor right down to the suspension.”

It’s also extremely ugly, yet I can’t look away.

The price is steep, but it’s actually reduced from a couple of earlier attempts— $300K on eBay in 2010 and $275K on Craigslist in April 2017.

If you’re looking for a reason to buy it, perhaps you could write it off as a business expense? It would certainly be one of the most unusual Uber vehicles in the country.