All about C3 SPECIAL EDITION Corvettes
Transcript [Music] hello everybody Lyle at c&s corvettes in Sarasota Florida here to continue my series of videos on the special edition corvettes offered by gm between 1978 all the way up to present day okay sorry before we get started guys please take a moment to like and subscribe to our channel down here right right down here because that's what allows me to keep doing what i do for you guys I'm really pushing to get to 20 000 here in the next 30 days or so and we're doing really really well if you find my information valuable if you think I'm pretty whatever please hit like and subscribe so that we can get to my goal and that's going to allow me to do even more stuff and start doing some videos including cars maybe off-site uh expand the channel a bit uh the further i get with your help the further i'll be able to take you so thank you in advance let's get back to the material today we're going to talk specifically about the third generation c3 special editions this is where it all got started now you guys know that they made a whole lot of special cars in the 60s and the 70s that are legendary but it wasn't until 1978 that gm said we're going to make a very special car that is going to have its own special vin number designation it's gonna have its own paint coat it's gonna have a bunch of cool stuff that no other corvette has and we're gonna make very limited production of this car to make it super special to honor the 25th anniversary of corvette production at least that was the idea to start with they had absolutely no clue how popular this idea was going to be for instance the Indianapolis pace car in 1978 was the Chevrolet corvette so they came out with a special paint scheme with a cool front spoiler cool rear spoiler brand new design seats nice leather steering wheel all kinds of stuff that hadn't been seen in the c3 before and they were only going to make 300 of them to start with to match up the original production total from 1953 in flint Michigan which was 300 cars excellent trivia question then they started getting so many orders that they decided well okay we're going to make one for each Chevy dealership but the orders kept getting piled up people were buying two and three of these cars assuming that they were going to be super collectible in the future so the people that had money were buying one to drive and one to put away or one to drive and two two to put away it became a feeding frenzy all in all they ended up making 6502 of these cars when originally only 300 were planned in fact it even spawned an offshoot because pre-orders were so heavy they came out with what they called the silver anniversary edition paint scheme now it is very important to note that the silver anniversary the one that you all know the two-tone light silver over dark silver cars do not have their own special vin code in fact it wasn't even anything other than pace car paint scheme just changed from black over silver to light silver over dark silver no spoilers at the front or rear nothing else special about it and the only qualifications were you could pick that option as long as you chose sport mirrors and aluminum wheels all 78 corvettes had the big chunky 25th anniversary emblem on the nose and on the gas door but the two special cars were the pace car 6502 made and the silver anniversary paint option which it wasn't truly a special edition but everybody treats it as such even though they made 15 283 of them they were everywhere after gm saw how well that went over they decided we should do this more often so they started doing it more often and in fact just a couple years later in 1982 at the very end of the c3 run they introduced the 1982 collector car this car had a very wild paint scheme had a very wild interior design so it was silver beige paint with custom faded decals literally all over the car the decal kit for that is like 33 pieces and it is just it's got wheels that are very similar to the 1967 corvette bolt-on wheels that was what they were shooting for with that design it also had the first and only opening rear hatch glass and those hinges are a whole other video i need to make because they're always a problem but it was the first time that that rear hatch opened so you could actually get access to the trunk without having to reach over your shoulder to get there and they carried that design all the way through into the new c4 which of course we don't all know that those windows always opened the custom interior had like three tones it was just so much the gm had never done a car with this much detail to it even the emblems were different it was very very cool they made 6759 of them of course all of them had the crossfire injection engine as did all 1982's and they were all four-speed automatics because there was no stick shift in 1982. the pace cars hold their value really really well from 1978. the silver anniversary paint scheme usually kind of bumps along with the rest of the 78s in value the 82 collector cars are actually starting to bump up a little bit in value they weren't as desired as they are becoming i think if you can get your hands on a good one it might be a good investment for the next decade or so because they are unique enough and have enough cool stuff on them that they aren't your everyday corvette special edition that's just a paint option they had a bunch of cool bits put on them just like the 78 pace car if you yourself own one of these special c3s if you're looking for one of these special c3s or if i can help you in any way with questions about these particular cars feel free to contact me at Lyle at corvetteheartcenter.com and make sure to like and subscribe right down below so i can continue to bring you this kind of information throughout my busy workday thank you we'll see you soon