daverulz

I've been driving past a late 80's 'Vette for sale for the past couple of weeks. So this morning I decided to stop and take a look. It was ugly, and appeared to be poorly and distastefully modified. Stupid spoiler, silly smurf blue accents and a questionable exhaust. I figured it therefore might be cheap.

So I give it a quick look over and notice that the for sale sign has fallen off. It is a manual transmission that's good...wait what's this sticker



Run inside to the shop.
"That's not a real Callaway is it?"
He responds "It is. Wanna hear it run?" as he handed me the keys.
I must have looked really excited because then he said "You can start it but don't drive it!"


It fired off in a millisecond, and I started having dreams like I did when I was a kid lusting over these cars.

The down side is. It's not a cheap 'vette as I thought. The guy wants 25k for it. Number 4 of 400 in 1988.

Car has like 64k on it. Clearly needs work. The shop owner said the owner of the car swapped out the transmission for a 5 speed, but I thought it was a 4 speed. Has the Borla exhaust. Weather seals looked a little dry rotted, headliner was sagging. Poorly repaired holes from what must have been a different ugly spoiler. Paint was sad. But...It's a B2k. I think 25k is steep, but who knows maybe he'd negotiate.

It's in Branford CT, and I have the number off the sign if anyone wants to give him a call.

I just never expected such an ugly car to turn out to be such a gem

84wuzmy1st

A month or 2 ago there was a really nice B2K on Ebay for 19K. 25K is high I think as you should be able to get a nice one cheaper with just some patience... or just buy a ZR-1 for 5K less...

Offer 15K :P

cv67

He will never get close to that the car is butchered to death
Wouldnt drive it for a second like that

Nice find though not so many of those on the road

daverulz

It's def not worth 25k. Regardless, it's worth a lot more than the hacked up automatic 84 I expected it to be.

active1951

Wow.
You just "can't judge a book by its cover"...

84wuzmy1st

Sad really that someone did that to the car.

We had a B2K and a ZR-1 in my house when I was in my late teens and I LOVED driving the B2K.

1993C4LT1

On the bright side, you can remove those dumb add ons,

DinoBob

Wonder why C4s can't get respect? Look no further, what an embarrassment.

1993C4LT1

I've seen C5's and C6's similar to or worse than that C4.

daverulz

Agreed, assuming you can get the car for a reasonable price, the cosmetic issues are easy to fix. What's important is the motor, and that was running GREAT.

1993C4LT1

At the right price, I'd go for it.

Lloyd Smale

Id proably pass. Ive heard some things not so good about the reliabiity and longevity of those and looking like that id be conserned about how it was serviced. Never had a callaway but ran a couple Grand nationals and the turbos in that era need GOOD CLEAN oil o survive. Looks like nothing but a money pit to me. Like was said for the same money you can get into a nice zr1 these days or pick up a cherry lt4

84wuzmy1st

At 25K the owner is waiting for a rube.

Considering the whole tranny swap BS, the shape of the car, unknown service history (I assume) I would say even at $10K it would be a hard sell/risk from a value perspective.

I don't think there is much either for replacement parts from Callaway though I could be wrong but even if there is it won't be cheap if parts are needed for the turbo system.

wydopnthrtl

From a monetary standpoint:
I'd estimate its price as if all original (current market price). Then subtract for all the "mods" it would take to get it back to stock condition.
Anything above that and your just throwing money into a hole.

Now from a interest stand point... I'd get the body back to stock condition and then mod it to my liking (with the understanding it's throwing currency out the window)

84wuzmy1st

Here is a B2k on our own forums for sale @ $22.5K in awesome shape... and it's a vert!

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c4s-...-22-500-a.html

daverulz

I'm not looking to buy a Callaway. Too rich for my blood. Too special a car. They really require a special kind of owner...aka $$$$$. If I bought that car it would have to sit in my garage and just be oogled because I'm sure I couldn't afford even the parts to fix it if it broke.

I was just hella surprised that THAT corvette, the one I assumed was a piece of crap, turned out to be a damn B2k

Also, just so the story is straight. The car is sitting at a shop. The guy who I talked to was not the owner of the car, so he has little to no knowledge about it other than what he retained from what the owner had told him. If anyone is interested in getting the full story they can call the owner, I have the number off the sign. I'm not going to call him, because I can't buy that car.

I don't know anything about if he has records, documentation etc. But also consider that this car is located about 30 miles from Callaway's headquarters and it's completely possible that it's been maintained by them.

cv67

From looking closely at the eng compartment looks like its just been driven and hardly maintained at all. Would not want

daverulz

LOL! You can tell engine maintenance from the outside of the motor?

Philsphan

If he could track down the original seats and undo the dumb add ons I could see that being low 20s... offer 21k if he undoes all the crap... lol... I would love to drive one of those things have more torque then a dumptruck lol

daverulz

To my surprise, Callaway still has many parts for these cars in stock! As expected they're expensive, but that should not be a surprise for a car that was built in such low volume.

EX: Left exhaust manifold ~$1200, Left Intercooler ~$1400

But those are things that I wouldn't really expect to go bad. The little things that go bad on an old car like this are all not that bad...again for a specialty car.

Just look at the parts cost as a torque tax