Ok, seeing by the results and my expectations of what car I want, I'm most likely going with a totally or at least partially restored car. I see a lot of them on dealer websites and would like to purchase one of them but have no time to travel. Would it be a wise move to check it out online, call them and get as much detail as possible and have it shipped without looking at it in person? I know it probably wouldn't be but I need some opinions because I'm losing patience and want one of these babies really bad!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for all the help so far! :thumbs:
Ken

 

my 68 was a mess...worn carpeting, cracked hood corners, busted in quarters by the fenders, on and on and on...had no choice....did all the work myself

 

Who lives close to OneHotV6 to put him in a straight jacket until this passes?
While you have him tied up send all his money my way and he get's his badly wanted vette from my garage. It's red.... that's all you need to know. :lol:

 

:lol: :lol:

Don't worry, I'm not totally nutso...!! :crazy:

 

experience is a great teacher - find the cheapest rebuilt vette and enjoy the hell out of it as a driveable car - and when I say rebuilt car Im talking modern radio, modern tires, modern tranny, modern fuel injection system, fresh interior, and modern paint. Lets face it - modern cars are a heck of a lot better on the road than the oldies.

 

Try to find a forum member in the area of the vette to check it out, and offer to pay them for their time. If you can't find a forum member to check it out, I would get as much info as possible, and if it sounds good I would take a look at it in person. You say that you have no time to travel, if you do not have it checked out or take the time to go yourself to check it out, could be a costly mistake and cost you more then the time and expense to go yourself. You could also have the seller take it to a corvette shop and tell him you will pay for the inspection if you buy it or not, just call a vet shop in the area and ask them what they would charge for an inspection.

There have been many members on this forum, myself included that went to check one out and it was not as described. I looked at one locally, first I saw pics and asked many question, then decided to go check it out. In the pics it looked very nice, but in person not so nice for the price and was told the engine had been rebuilt, the engine looked and sounded like it needed to be rebuilt again. Was over priced about $4500. in the condition, but the seller made it sound very good on the phone. They try to recover all of the money they have invested and most of the time, they won't.

When I found my 73, I asked questions, next day or two, I would call or email and ask more question, Had very detailed pics of just about every part of the car sent to me, and once I decided that I wanted to buy the car, I took a day off from work (Friday) flew from Houston to Knoxville, spent about 4 hours checking out the car, laid down the cash, and headed home. Did not have any problem at all.

I work to hard for my money and would rather spend $500. (travel expenses and a days pay) to go check it out, then to end up with something that I would not otherwise buy and have to sink even more money into to bring it up to the standards of what I was looking for.

I'm very happy with the results.

 

Those replies bring up some good points.. I definitely don't want to get stuck with something that's not as it was described and be unhappy. There's actually one I saw in the local paper a few days ago for a 72 coupe, 90k on car, all original, 350, motor and tranny were rebuilt, motor has a bigger cam, just needed the seats to be redone and said it was in mint cond. I was actually thinking of checking it out, he's asking $10k.

It sounds too good to be true that's why I haven't jumped at it yet..
What do you guys think??

 

I started out with the intention of keeping my car original. After all, it's only original once, right? I soon realized that the car was going to be impossible to live with kept as original because I would be constantly working on it to maintain the worn out mechanicals.

So then I decided to do a complete restoration as faithful as possible to NCRS type standards. That is until I realized that meant restoring all of the production mistakes and oversights just as they were delivered from the factory. That was also unsatisfactory to me as I realized that meant re-applying generally lousy paint, living with door gaps that could better be described as canyons, and body cracks, because '68's lacked many of the reinforcements that the later models had.

I finally decided to do it my way which is to make it as close to stock appearing as possible but to implement the improvements from some of the later years to improve the car. I also plan to invest a lot of time and money in the paint so that the rest of my work does not prove insignificant (since that's what is most obvious to the common Joe).

Keep in mind that regardless of whether you go the restored route or original route that a Corvette in excellent condition is an expensive proposition. That's just a fact, so accept it.