So you say your daughter likes Barbie dolls, eh? Well, I may have found a way for you to justify bringing home a project Corvette! This 1957 Corvette here on eBay is said to be a one-off promotional car painted Barbie pink to showcase life-sized Barbie and Ken dolls that sold for $150,000 each! That’s either one incredibly tall tale or so weird there’s no way the seller made it up. We’ll let you decide. Thanks goes to Peter R for the tip!
If you do some quick Googling, not much in the way of either life-sized mannequins or custom ’57 Corvette comes up when searching for Barbie-related topics. Obviously, the Corvette has been used more than once throughout history as the Barbie toy car of choice for the holiday shopping season, and there is at least one picture of a Corvette of this vintage painted that very special shade of pink.
Without any paperwork establishing a connection to Mattel, however, I’m not sure how much this car is worth as a historical artifact. And if the promotion was merely orchestrated by some sort of regional sales manager – rather than Mattel corporate – it’s not worth much more than any other cut-up curiosity. Based on the pictures, you can see it’s been hacked apart. The seller even admits he was going to convert it into a custom resto-mod, so obviously the Barbie connection didn’t matter much to him.
There’s no motor or transmission. In fact, the only thing original about this car may be the front suspension, as the seller has swapped out the rear end for one from a 1990 Corvette. The chassis is said to be original, but that’s about it. This ’57 ‘Vette is a long way from returning to the roads, a matter made more complicated when you learn it was also used as a movie prop, as those cars tend to be abused even more than promotional models! Still, if the history checks out, it’s a must-have for the Barbie fanatic in your life – you’ll just have to be comfortable driving a pink car!
Damn these impostors! I really wanted an authentic Barbie/Ken pink Corvette project car with life-sized Barbie (not Ken, not that there’s anything wrong with that).
No Barbie? I’ll pass too. Even though my first wife was “Barbie”.
Entire text of the Ebay auction in ALL CAPS. Must have taken lessons from Nigerian spammers.
No matter how you search all the keywords, only this guy’s ad comes up. Hmmmmm…
Maybe it was part of a show in “Vegas, one of the shows that were not advertised.
They made lots of these cheap replica knock offs retail promotions. Don’t believe everything you read on EBay
I think i have one, who made them?
Barbie didn’t have a car until 1962, and it was an Austin Healey.
This is a total fake, it’s not even a real corvette. What it is is a Big POS.
If it’s cheap enough, it could be a replica vette for whatever: Roadracing, drags or just a streeter, the real ones ARE expensive and the mechanical bits cheep
Are you in Texas?
That’s an Eklers one half front end ……what is curious to me is the trouble someone went through to make the interior a tub.
It’s still not worth as much as that Massey in the background.
There was one of these in a mall near me back in the 90’s! It was some clothing store, and was a turquoise/white paint scheme. It was just a display item, though.
They say Barbie would be 8 feet tall in real life. Would she even have fit in this car?
You’d have to bend her knees!!
Like Rex Kahrs said, “not like there is anything wrong with that!”. Being about 5′ 9″, standing face to face, that could be great. Well, face to…..well you get the picture.
Knock knock, so I opened the door, there were a pair of 38’s pointing right at my face, so I let her in!
In the 90s there was a fake scale model of a 57 Chevy convertible with the same color scheme at a clothing store in the mall. Same prop chassis too. I’d bet the same company made them both.
I think i have this now. Pink/white with green interior, sealed shell. Any one know who made them ?
Do you have more info? I have one and am trying to get history on it