1973 Coupe, Metallic Yellow, automatic.
About a month after selling the 63, and regretting it, I was in NJ for a few days for service training on some new office machines. I spotted an ad for this car in the local paper and checked it out. The "Metallic Yellow" paint didn't have much of a shine, but otherwise it was nearly flawless, and came with both painted and glass tops. Back home, Sandy and I discussed it and decided to go for it. The next Saturday I flew down to Newark where the seller met me at the airport. He got his $7000, I got the papers and drove it to Danvers MA, where Sandy met me. We participated in a Corvette show the next day to get acquainted with the new ride.
Although the car performed flawlessly driving to MA then back to Maine, I found it to be very uncomfortable. The only way I could get any kind of seating comfort was to slide way down. Then I could barely see out over the dash! I also disliked the instrumentation, the lack of luggage space, and the huge doors with no vent windows. These complaints remained for the year we owned it. The paint shined up pretty well and we added the aftermarket wheels. I used the Rallye wheels that it came with it on the 38 Dodge street rod I was building at the time. We also sold the glass tops to a friend for $800.
Yeah, it spent that winter outside. Of course, one of the worst in many years for snow! The street rod project car claimed the garage.
We actually put a set of recap snow tires on it and Sandy drove it through the winter. It did very well, but there was one unusual snow incident... while parked! Sandy had a business association meeting one evening during a very dry blowing snow storm. When the meeting broke up I got a call. "I can't get into the car, I can't get the door open!" I drove over to the restaurant where the meeting was held, figuring the door seals were frozen. Nope - the very dry blowing snow had built up under those flapper door handles the C3s had, to the point that you couldn't push it down far enough to unlatch the door! I went into the restaurant to get a cup of warm water, poured it slowly into the pocket under the flapper, and it opened! Anybody else ever encounter this problem? I haven't found anybody. But then again, how many people drive their Corvette in the snow!
We sold it the following Spring to finance the completion of the 38 Dodge rod. We got what we had paid for it, $7000, plus we had already sold the glass tops for $800, so it served us pretty well. And its Rallye wheels rolled up another 150k miles on the Dodge!
