“America’s Sports Car”, the Chevrolet Corvette, debuted in 1953. It barely survived its first three years with less than 5,000 assemblies combined. The slow start may have been contributed in part to the ordinary drivetrain – a 235 cubic inch “Blue Flame” six-cylinder and a 2-speed Powerglide automatic transmission. Eventually the car would get a V8 and a 4-speed and sales would finally take off. The seller has a second-year project, one that has begun to emerge as a restomod with a monster engine, but much work remains. Located in Scottsdale, Arizona, this ‘Vette is available here on eBay. So far, the opening bid of $50,000 has not been cast, though the seller has nearly half that amount tied up in the motor alone.
First year Corvettes were largely hand assembled with just 300 units squeezed out. Some mechanization was introduced in 1954 and 3,640 copies got built. With 700 units produced in 1955, Chevy almost gave up on the car. Fortunately, they did not, and the Corvette is still on the market today, though a very different machine than its 1950s ancestors.
The seller has owned this car for about 10 years but has only driven it minimally. A lack of time and resources will prevent the project from moving forward on his/her watch. A large investment has been made in the engine to make it competitive with an AC Ford Cobra 427. A running all-aluminum 540 V8 made by Donovan sits under the hood, capable of 800 hp when the rest of the vehicle is hooked up. If you tried to replicate the motor, you’d have to spend $25,000 to get there (or so we’re told).
This ‘Vette is not drivable because the installed rear end is six wider than the fiberglass body. So, something will need to be modified for the hardware to cooperate with each other. Also, the floor has been extended to push out the gas and brake pedals to fit a driver that’s more than six feet tall (i.e., the seller). Lots of bodywork remains to be done and the seller has many of the pieces you don’t see. But the car still lacks door glass, side trim, a radiator, some brakes and suspension parts, an exhaust, wiring harness and more.
The chassis and frame are not stock ’54 Corvette and the car has a Muncie 5-speed manual transmission. We’re told the interior and paint were once black in color at some point. If you don’t mind finishing something another person has started, this could be a heckuva badass Corvette someday.
The car is also on Bring A Trailer:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1954-chevrolet-corvette-103/
Anyone wanna take odds that’ll it end up on Barn Finds auctions and Cars & Bids?
I second that.
Oh and don’t forget Hagerty Marketplace
If this car sells for anything near 50K I’m going to get out my grungy, smelly old tennis shoes and try to sell them for $500. Could be a neat project but not with that buy in price.
Do the shoes come with old socks that have holes in them?
Yes, and they even match.
Absolutely the wrong car to butcher this badly and install a monster motor. These early Vettes need stock restoration. Nothing else. If I was interested, I would offer to buy the motor only.
I would agree if this started as a clean, numbers matching car, but it doesn’t appear that it did. There is a really nice resto-mod one of these with rear IRS pushrod suspension and all that I see every year at GG Nationals tearing up the autocross course. I can’t see ever complaining about modifying a Corvette so that it can be driven with anger, as it was originally intended, but to todays standards.
Seller mentions, that it still needs door glass. Maybe its been modified but an original 54 Vette did not have door glass, only had snap on side curtains. 56 was the first year with roll up windows.
Won’t be long before that motor creates cracks in that wonderful sculpture of a body.
Interesting concept, but absolutely the wrong car. That old glass body would never be able to handle the torque and horsepower this motor will produce, and this thing is honestly probably 50 to 75K away from done, (not to mention any prospective buyer would need some serious skills) You have to wonder what the person that started building this thing was thinking. (And why they went with such an exotic and spendy motor)
Correct about the early bodies — they were all chopper gun layup. Like, NO fg cloth! That kind of power will vibrate that body to pieces in no time!
The glass bodies had their fair share of cracking issues with just the small standard power.
Sell the running gear and rolling chassis separately.
Exactly.
The bidding is at 10K!!!? The only value is the power train and the Art Morrison frame. This is in the Butcher shop.
Someone turned this into a “Frankenmobile “. Tis pity.
I can’t tell how this body was created.
Let’s just say there aren’t many panels left that GM might have installed on a real ’54 Corvette.
The listing has been removed from e-bay but I still have a couple of quick observations. The ad said that it had a Ç6 rear end which is a trans axel with a Tremec T56 6 speed, not a 5 speed. It also mentions a Muncie 5 speed. I know that Muncie was working on a 5 speed overdrive gearbox (M256?) but I don’t know if it ever came to be. Even if it did, it would have been an engine mounted unit and not compatible with a C6 rear end. Just kind of curious about the validity of the ad.
540 cubic inches= 8.5 liters. That ought to do it,eh?
That is a Corvette (C5 or later) rear subframe that is bolted in there. The diff is there but the transmission that is normally bolted to it (and mounted just ahead of the diff) isn’t there. Don’t know if they have a transmission attached to the engine but they are going to need some serious custom driveline work to get it all together and working because the diff is set up to mate with the rear mounted transmission. Bolting in a C6 trans isn’t going to work as you don’t have room for it between the seats and the diff. And yes a C6 Corvette has a much wider track, so not only do you need shorter half shafts, but new rear suspension arms to get it all to fit inside the body. I suspect that the person doing this got this far and after realizing how much work it will take to get something that can be driven, gave up and put it all up for sale. As noted above, the only value is in the frame and engine, and putting it under a body this narrow was a fools errand. There’s a reason that early Corvette restomods using C5 and later chassis look funny, they have longer back ends and are wider than a real C1. This guy went his own way and is paying the price for it. It could be fixed but it’s going to take some serious custom machine work to do it and that’s expensive.
It would take a heck of a lot more than some “serious custom drive line work” to get an engine mounted gear box to mate up with a trans axel. One would need to fabricate some sort of a crazy differential adapter to replace the gear box. Now I suppose someone with access to a complete machine shop including a C&C and a whole boatload of design and fabrication skills might be able to pull it off, but even then it wouldn’t be easy.
It would take a heck of a lot more than some “serious custom drive line work” to get an engine mounted gear box to mate up with a trans axel. One would need to fabricate some sort of a crazy differential adapter to replace the gear box. Now I suppose someone with access to a complete machine shop including a C&C and a whole boatload of design and fabrication skills might be able to pull it off, but even then it wouldn’t be easy.
Just because you have a lot of money in a butchered up mistake doesn’t mean someone will bail you out.
Why not buy a Kindigit car? By the time you finish it the Kindigit car would probably be cheaper and much better.
I agree with you that one of Dave Kindig’s CF-1 hand built hot rods would almost certainly be a nicer car than than this would ever be but I really disagree that it would be cheaper. One of Kindig’s CF-1s will set a fella back between 600 and 800K. That kind of quality ain’t cheap. I would think that 200K into this would get a pretty cool ride.
The seller mentions spending $23k lately to get it running !
This is not the kind of project you get into if you :1- dont have unlimited funds
2- don’t have excellent building experience
3- don’t have a huge garage facility
And i agree with others , leave these first year corvettes unmolested
YOLO
After looking at the invoice for the work done, somehow I get the impression that this guy has been paying to have someone to also do the other work. If that’s the case he may be relying on someone else’s “expertise” for many of the decisions that have been made for this build. If that’s the case, it’s a real shame that someone would lead him down this road.
I’ve seen this happen before, although not to this degree. Many people want to get into this hobby not knowing how expensive it is, especially if one does not have the knowledge, or the confidence in there own abilities, to do much of the work themselves.
Some people are too afraid to make a mistake and that handicaps them. I have a friend that is now in his 90’s. When I met him about 20 years ago, he was paying someone to restore a 70 Mustang for him. The car was in his garage and this “Ford Expert” would come over a couple nights a week and my friend would pay him to work on it. Mind you this has been going on since I’ve known him. The car IMO is ready to drive but because there are still a couple minor things that my friend thinks need to be done and because he thinks only the “Expert”, who is now hard to get a hold of, can perform them, the car sits. Its sad to say but at this rate and at his age he will be lucky if he ever gets to drive it.
The bottom line is, it looks like this guy with the Vette had a dream and someone said “I’ll do it” and led him down a bad path.
At this point he should probably separate everything and sell it for parts. Probably make more doing it that way, although, I’m sure he just wants to see it and his nightmare go away in one piece.