1980 Chevy Corvette Four Door Can’t Be Unseen, Seeks $217k

A California shop apparently built six all total, and this is the reddest of them all.

By Christopher Smith, Motor1.com

Do not attempt to adjust screen settings on your mobile device or PC monitor. What you are seeing is real, and depending on how you feel about custom creations such as this, that could be a good thing or the stuff of nightmares. In either case, NBS Auto Showroom in Milpitas, California can set you up with all the details on this 1980 Chevrolet Corvette four-door and how to buy it, if you’re so inclined. Presumably, the sales team will also have some logic behind its asking price of—wait for it—$217,203. Mind you, that’s not an even $217,200, but $217,200 and three extra dollars. Or to put it another way, it's nearly double the cost of a new Corvette ZR1. Then again, you can’t take three friends for a ride in a ZR1.

We do know some stuff about this very curious Corvette. The ad says it’s factory original, but some Google research tells us it was built back in the late 1970s by a Pasadena-based company called California Custom Coach. Super Chevy actually has a good article that covers this crazy four-door Corvette plan, but for our purposes, know that only six were built and this red example could be one of only two left.

© Provided by The Motorsport Network   1980 Chevrolet Corvette Four Door

Each car was made by basically fusing two Corvettes together—T-tops and all—with the rear glass opening to make this a five-door hatchback sports car 30 years before the Porsche Panamera was born. This particular car is reported as having just 20,000 miles, though a photo of the odometer actually shows 21,006 miles. It’s very red inside and out, and actually, the rear bucket seats don’t look that uncomfortable. The sales description doesn't offer much else in the way of details, save for the standard-issue, used-car terms like excellent condition, fully loaded, and so forth. It’s listed as having paperwork available, and that it’s completely original. In this case, that would mean a 5.7-liter V8 connected to a four-speed automatic, making roughly 200 horsepower.

In our search for more information on this four-door Corvette, we came upon several reports going as far back as 2010 of an identical looking car for sale on eBay as well as Craigslist, with an asking price upwards of $300,000. There’s certainly no denying its rarity, but if this is the same car still in the hand of the same owner, perhaps a serious reevaluation is in order.