I not only remember when the ’69 Corvette came out, I wrote the 1969 Corvette brochure, I owned one, in yellow. But with a small block engine. Now of course a 427 big block was available but I wanted a little gas mileage (even in those days). But now the word is spreading that a 1969 Corvette ZL1 convertible is coming up for auction. One of two I realize that two cars out of several thousand made in ’69 is rare and that the ZL1, an aluminum block, is rare and cost $4,700 as an option back then but I think talk of this car being worth millions is ridiculous.
I consider the 1967 L88-code, 427-cubic-inch big-block engine version that sold at auction for $2.7M ridiculous too. But the ZL1 is much rarer. Why were so few ZL1s ordered? Because twice the stock price was hard to wrap your mind around.
Here’s some Corvettes that to me are worth more:
– An SR2 that was a ’56 show car of which three were made. One tamer than the other two. But dammit it was a weak attempt at a factory race car.
– The Corvette SS. Not the magnesium bodied race car, this was a sorta copy of the SR2, missing for many years and restored but there’s an ownership problem that stops it from breaking out into the open.
– A factory concept car with some dream car additions like the outside pipes car of a couple GM executives. At least it was an attempt to get some of the dream car stuff on a regular car.
– Any Corvette that raced at Le Mans like the Briggs Cunningham Corvette.
This 1969 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray ZL-1 Convertible, due to cross the block at RM Sotheby’s in Arizona next month has never been offered for public sale. It was last sold in 2007, when the current owner bought it from the original owner. It was restored by Kevin Mackay in 2014 and was certified by Bloomington Gold as the first of the two ZL1s produced. The auction estimate is $2.6 to 3.0 million.
My argument is that some collectors go over the top just to have the most expensive of anything ever offered; for the bragging rights. I relate cars more to the personalities behind them such as the Mercedes 300SLR coupe that sold for several million, it was the only 300SLR racer made into a gullwing coupe; it was made for Ing. Uhlenhaut who engineered the 300SL, it was his personal car to take skiing. So dammit you are buying it as a tribute to him. That car I consider a tribute car to the man that engineered it; and customized it.
Same with Shelby’s two twin Paxton SuperCobras. One was made for him to drive, it had to have an automatic because an old leg operation gave him pain to drive a stick. It had two sets of gauges (left over from his pilot days). He had adventures with it. There were two of them, the other was accidentally driven off a cliff. So that car I can see spending over a million on, you’re buying a tribute to Shelby, a tribute to the Cobra really, built to order by Shelby but to think this Corvette is worth as much as that, I say no. If it was Zora Arkus-Duntov’s personal car, engineered especially for him, yes, but it’s a production car.
Enough already.
