I know this isn’t the kind of Corvette barn find most of us dream of coming across, but personally I think this Yardman 1961 Corvette go-kart looks like an incredibly fun project! Yardman built these tiny Corvettes as promotional items for Chevy dealerships. When you bought a brand new Corvette for yourself, you could order a matching one for your kids. Let’s be honest, most of us would have ordered one simply because of how cool they are! This example is in need of a full restoration, but at least there isn’t a lot here to restore. You can find it here on eBay in Arvada, Colorado with a BIN of $2,500.
I’m not too sure about the seller’s asking price, they based their value off of a fully restored example that sold for $7,500 a couple years back at auction. I’ve found other examples going for around $1,500, which would seem like a better deal to me for this one. It’s missing one of its original wheels and the original engine after all. I guess the Briggs and Stratton 3 horsepower engine would do a good job at moving it around, but if you want to put it back to original you’re going to have to hunt down a Lauson engine.
While it isn’t a full sized Corvette, if you want an awesome piece of history to restore and put on display, this Yardman would be a lot cheaper to take on. Fitting in it might be a challenge, but seeing the kids or grandkids having fun in it, would make it well worth the work! So what do you think of this Mini Corvette? Would you enjoy restoring it?
I own a 1/1 1961 Corvette which happens to be Roman Red with White Coves. Would love to have this but with the missing deck lid and windshield I don’t see how I would ever find those parts.
I would just hang it in my garage as is, along side of my other kiddie cars
The site “The Old Motor” has a feature on Friday’s, kind of a car spotting exercise, and a few weeks back had a picture of a parade in 1960 in Custer, S. Dak. and featured one of these in the parade. One commentor said they were made by a company called Pro-Mo Sales of Jackson, Mich. and sold new for $146.95. ( almost $1200 dollars today!) He claimed they had 3 hp B&S motors and were very unstable. http://theoldmotor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Cambell-Chevrolet-Buick-Corvette-Circa-1960.jpg
As a kid, the local Sears store sold a version of these. Theirs were in blue, probably a 1960 model.
Wouldn’t be hard to fab the windshield and trunk lid if you had access to an original to see how its supposed to look.
Rather drive this to work than one of those stubby cars that have been recently featured.
There was one in that auction of new unsold cars in Nebraska – VanderBrink did that auction…
Had a chance to buy one of these and an equally interesting AstroVair at a yard sale in the late 1970s. My dad thought $75 each was too much. Oh brother where art they?
A good fiberglass fabricator could possible do the lid. The windshield was upright and didn’t have many of the compound curves of the real car. Easy to mold some acrylic or plexiglass to the right shape for the windscreen. Maybe 3-D print it!!!??!!?!
Not the first Corvette to have a motor swap.
LS swap?
Ok. Maybe Harley V twin.
anybody know where there could possibly be machasnical parts for one of these corvettes or engine parts, original..