The nice thing about collecting Corvettes is that their previous owners were more likely to baby them than the owners of more mundane collector cars; after all, Corvettes have never been cheap and they’ve always been special. This particular 41,870-mile 1959 model was owned by the same person for over 60 years (until the current owner picked it up). With one repaint in its original Crown Sapphire Metallic (one of only 888 in that color, according to the ad), this Corvette is being sold as a survivor, and bidding here on eBay has been brisk: 21 bids to $34,100 at the time of this writing. It’s located in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
To me, the most interesting thing about this Corvette is not its beautiful color, low mileage, or originality; it’s the drivetrain. While we often think of C1 Corvettes with dual quads or Rochester fuel injection, this car has the standard 230-horsepower 283. Even better? It has the three-speed manual, so the running gear is as basic as you could get in a ’59 Corvette. The three-speed wasn’t as rare in ’59 as it would later become: 3,617 out of 9,670 cars had it. Something that many forget is that the three-speed had a non-synchromesh first gear all the way up through 1966 (!), and it was standard even with the top-of-the-line fuel injected engines. Manual-transmission Corvettes came standard with a fairly steep 3.70:1 rear axle ratio, so acceleration was guaranteed to be strong.
The interior is nice but not perfect: The driver’s seat has some torn seams, the carpet is showing wear, and the corners of the dashboard have some cracks. Eckler’s sells upholstery for both bucket seats (in blue) for $559, so that might be an avenue that the new owner will wish to take.
That carpet in the trunk lets you know that this is a car that saw some use back in the 1960s and 1970s. There aren’t any undercarriage pictures in the eBay ad, but the seller says that the car shows no rust, rot, or prior repairs, and although it apparently runs, shifts, stops, and drives well, the implication is that it has been off the road for a while, so it will probably need some debugging before using the car regularly. The old bias ply tires will need to be replaced.
Of course, that’s to be expected for something that has low mileage and has clearly been sitting for some time, but is there anything better than an original(ish) car with a story? If you like solid-axle Corvettes from the quad-headlight era, and you don’t mind that this example isn’t one of the “ground pounders,” it might be worth a look, and maybe even a bid.
What a beautiful color combination. I’m all in on a more basic 283 3 speed combination. Like Aaron said, its basically bullet proof. I did not know about the non syncro first gear on these. No big deal. I like it.