Heritage Series -- The One and Only 1983 Corvette
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- čas přidán 19. 10. 2016
- The world's only 1983 Corvette has long been shrouded with mystery. Why is it the only one? How did it manage to survive? How did it wind up at the National Corvette Museum? In this installment of the NCM Heritage Series, we track down the people who were there as this car made its trip from the plant, through the Milford Proving Grounds, and into Corvette history.
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The story of the 83 is one of the biggest reasons why the C4 is and always will be my favorite Corvette generation 💜
I basically remember there were plans and parts available to build 50 vehicles. Every one of the 1983 vehicles that we built were hand built in a off line launch area in the Final Process area, The assembly line had not been tooled yet to run the C4. That was still coming in the next few months. The plant was still building the C3. The next big issue was how to keep the plant running the 1982 longer. That is about the time the 1982 Collector Edition production was stepped up.
I grew up in the 70's and fell in love with those big swooping fenders of the C3 Corvettes. I remember waiting like everyone for the next generation Corvette. When I first saw the car I really didn't like the design. It still looked like a Corvette but it wasn't a C3. My opinion changed after I got to drive a 85 with the auto trans. I thought the car handled like it was on rails but needed a bit more power. In 2001 I bought my first C4 a 96 Artic White coupe with grey leather interior. I'm on my third C4 now a 91 ZR1 with one of Marc Haibeck's 510 packages. This 83 is a truly cool and important part of Corvette History. Love what the NCM does and a fun place to visit along with the Bowling Green assembly plant.
I agree, the C3’s were very beautiful cars. My neighbor has a 1985 C4 and the engine is very underwhelming. The LT1 was a HUGE improvement, I like the analog gauges better as well
What a fantastic story about the world's only 1983 C4 Chevrolet Corvette. Excellent job Katie!
As a new and proud C4 owner, a 1991 ZR1, I absolutely love this story, thank you so much for posting this wonderful story.
Second time i just had to watch this episode to remember more of the great story on this very special car!
I got to see and touch the car at the grand opening of the National Corvette Museum in 1994..I can honestly say it was my favorite car there!
Great bit of automotive history!
What a heartwarming story on this 83 that was destined to be destroyed! Almost brought tears of happiness to my eyes! I have an 84 that looks just like that and is also white. This is what made this video very special to me.😅
We love our C4!
What a great story about a piece of automotive history. Great job with the video!
I've always been a Corvette fan since I was a kid. The first one I drove was a '78 and I wasn't impressed with the car, but the C-3 body is one of the most beautiful Corvette designs ever. Fast forward to June 1983...I saw my first C-4 at Beardmore Chevrolet. It was sitting outside of the service area with the clamshell up and there were so many people around it, I could barely see it. When I first saw it, I thought it looked like the Firebird from that era, but it definitely was all Corvette.
After driving the C-4, I was hooked. The C-3 made me love the Corvette...The C-4 made me want to OWN a Corvette. I'm on my 6th C-4 and I don't see me getting bored with design anytime soon. GM knocked the ball out of the park with the C-4. It will always be one of my favorite Corvettes. I've seen the 1983 C-4 at the Corvette Museum a couple of times. I wish that car could talk. I bet it has some stories!
I’m from Indiana so I went to Kentucky to see the car. It’s really cool to have my picture taken beside it!! I just noticed it is in kind of bad shape... There’s a lot of chips in the paint and stuff. When I showed the picture to my friends, they I can’t believe it!
Good job on the video. Strange time in the history of the Corvette. Working in the plant and in the middle of the C3 to the C4 transition and trying to build the vehicles was for sure a experience. Hard to explain if you were not there.
My dad bought an 84 vette in "chameleon" red! Well it was bright red but got the nickname chameleon red because the red paint was so terrible that the body panels had different hues of red depending on if the car was out in the sun to long! Was really put together poorly and was a rattle box..That being said it was also the most futuristic car I had ever seen and nothing on the road in 84 could even come close to it...
Just viewed the video[25jun2024] , and to my surprise my 1973 Corvette was briefly shown in it. My 73 has been a display car twice,at the National Corvette museum, once in the St Louis Assembly display which features a body off 73 Corvette and a completed Corvette. My 73 was there for a year as the Completed Corvette, The second time was for the World's Only 3's Exhibit, displaying each 3 year Corvette up through 2003. a 53, a 63, a 73(myCar), the one and only 83, a 93, and a 03. My car sat next to the 83 during that display. I have the banners featuring this display that flew outside the Museum. I still own the 73, a Silver Big Block 4 Speed Coupe.
I live a little over five hours away from the NCM and I'm happy that I got to see the '83 Vette back in 2008.
Wonderful concept and execution, Katie. And adding Dan Decker's work as an epilogue was the icing on the cake. Hope it's the first of many. John
I remember seeing the 83 on a family trip to tour the Bowling Green factory back in 1991. It was in the lobby on display. I saw numerous other cool Corvettes while there including several ZR1s. This was the most memorable of the bunch though.
Wonderful video!! Awesome car!!!
Yeah this video taught some very good history about the best car in the world the corvette
i love my 86' C-4 with the DN4+3!
Nice job Katie! Great video....
to think had that sinkhole been bigger this would have also been lost.
Great job!
The one dislike is the guy that ordered them to be destroyed
Way up in the GM engineering and vehicle compliance decisions.
I have visited the Corvette museum many times over the years
Well Done!
Awesome!!
I've seen this car April 1st 2019
Those wheels imo look waaaaay better than the 16" salad nonsense they installed on early C4.
Well done, however, I would like to have heard the story about the unique wheels on the car. Are they the only existing set of the proposed 'base' wheels (15"x7" with Goodyear Eagle GT, P215/65R-15 tires) that never went into production?
I believe Kelsey Hayes only made a Test Batch of less than 50 sets which would have been on the 40+ test mules which all got crushed. Such a waste destroying Test Cars (every part) My Daughter's Auto Vo-Tech School had a Dodge Viper on loan to them for a number of years. Then the word came down from Chrysler Corp Brass that all these loan Vipers had to be destroyed; they couldn't even keep the wheels and tires. Had to watch a Car that many Students had worked on/ educated themselves; be destroyed in front of their eyes....Prime example of Corporate Waste in America !
All the 15" wheels were destroyed when the cars were crushed. Tires sliced and wheels were drilled out. In the interim it was decided to go to the 16" with the directional Eagle tires. The right move for the Corvette. @@stevematz7354
I so hope they will still let me have my car received at the Museum
I remember when the newly designed C-4 Corvette came out in March of 1983 6 months earlier than any other 1984 vehicle was released with the price tag bumped up to $100,000 in Scottsdale. I also saw a 1984 Corvette with an analog dash that didn't have that new space age digital speedometer, can someone tell me how many of those were made?
Guaranteed-No 1984 saleable production cars left BG with the analog instrument panel. They were tested in pre-production but not released for saleable. I was the quality manager at the plant and trained all the inspectors that performed the final functional checks.
Yeah well I saw one in 1987 at the Insurance Auto Auction in Phoenix AZ so one must have got past you, I have no reason to make up a story like that, it had the same look as the Camaro speedometer did.@@phyllismontileone5297
@@phyllismontileone5297 There is an after market analog dash available. I had a 86 Coupe and thought about buying and installing one....but didn't.
I still believe the 83 could have gone into model year production; however the 1st recalls of the 84's might have meant more recalls of 83's. Not the first time something like this has happen. Back in May 1969 a GM Labor Dispute caused a stop production order of the 69 Run. Rather than end the 69 Model year at that time rather than when the new 70 Vette would appear in Sept 69; GM decided to extend 69 production through December 69 with a total build production of 38,762 cars. GM/Chevy could have canceled the 70 build year since they had already lost 4 months but went ahead with 70 production until September 70; however only getting 17,316 cars built for the complete 1970 production run, making it the lowest produced C3 from 1968 - 1982. In contrast the 1984 C4 Corvette was on showroom floors by March 1983 and that run went clear to Sept 84 with a total build production of 51,547 Cars. Despite having all those extra months over Standard Time Production Runs, the 1984 Corvette still comes up short in total production to the St.Louis built 1979 Corvette which cranked out 53,807 Total Cars; a record that still stands today.
The 1970 Camaro was also delayed to February 1970, the 1969 model year got extended into December 1969.
I was in quality at the plant in 1969. When the big strike occurred, it was a stop and walk out situation, there was many vehicles in process and parked on site along with parts in the pipeline process. St Louis had many strikes. It was a big plant with other passenger cars & trucks being produced also stuck in the strike. More than 10,000 employees at the time. So much more to the story not understood. GM did not have the EPA restrictions as in the early 70's as imposed in the late 70's so they could extend the 1969 and still meet the plants vehicle certification requirements. The 1983 had numerous issues other than engine certification even though engine cert that was one factor. That same crossfire engine was used in the 1982 Corvette, but you still have to certify each year engine change or not. Calif was a tough market and set many requirements for all car manufacturers as we all probably remember. Drive by noise was an issue if you remember, we could not sell a manual in California when released until later. A lot more to the story that the public just does not understand. A complex business.
Ok now we need the story of the chartreuse color
mines a 92..l love it still fast and head turner....little red corvette..hahahhaha
Hypothetically. If the 83 went up for bid i wonder what it'd bring?
6 million ?
I was just wondering that! It’s gotta be a 7 figure car.
Basically, priceless since it's the only one in existence so nothing to compare it to for value. It was basically understood each one of the 1983 cost around a million dollars to just build. Thinking the cost of parts being manufactured that did not exist yet, the engineering support that it took to just put them together in a small hidden area in the plant. It was a very interesting time in Corvettes history.
I would've taken it home.
Another one
What happened to the boots that saved the last 83??
this guys asking the right questions
They were worn daily for years at the plant and finally went to Goodwill with holes in the soles. You have to remember the real story was told just 5 years ago or so after it was asked why the car was not crushed. No one really asked before besides some thoughts on the car. I had left the plant to go to Detroit with Cadillac. Really didn't give it thought that anyone really cared. Kind of how history works on some things. This posting is under my wife's name.
The boots saved the car.😁
the wheels on the 1983 look way better than the one's that went into production
If that's the only 1983 corvette, then what was the vette I bought in Oct. 1983, brand new off the show room floor.? I rolled that car end over end 8 times, Broke my neck in 2 places, Split my head open from the hairline to the ball of my head, which took 64 stitches to fix, was Quadriplegic for 3 months. All on April 2nd, The day after Marvin Gaye's father Shoot him to death. A year later , when I got well, I bought a 1984 corvette which was the Car of the year, That year. Somebody answer me that. I've always believed that I owned a 1983-84 corvette, and a 1084/84 corvette.
No 1983 Corvettes were for sale to the public. All but one were crushed by General Motors and we have the only one on display.
If you bought it in October of 1983 then there's a good chance it was a 1984 Corvette lol
The 10th digit of your VIN would have been an "E" and that denotes the 1984 model year. You had an early 1984 model produced in 1983.
If you understood the way all manufacturers certify the new model year you would understand how the date of manufacture is created. Forever the new model year comes out somewhere around Aug/Sept of the current year. So we made 1984 Corvettes in the summer of 1983. 1983 Corvettes would have been started in the summer of 1982. The 1982 Collector Corvette was created very quickly to keep 1982 production running. I could write a book on the subject to detail because the 30th anniversary Corvette got missed. The C4 was as big as the release of the C8 to the Corvette world. BOF vs a un and new electronics, and basically a new car overall. So much more to the story.
the rarest vette of them all cause there is only one 83 vette to ever see the light of day. you couldn't put a price on that car.
SteelCity1981 i heard there was around 50 produced this is the only surviving one left though
Did this car get swallowed up in the 2014 sinkhole??..
almost but no
fitament? good lord
yes, basically a net build car with not much variation to fit things. Anyone with a early C4 understands.
I bet there's another in some gm executive grandsons garage .has to be they couldn't destroy all 50.somebody ganked one
There’s actually 2 that’s the only one that’s known to survive….ask me how I know
How do you know? I would be very interested since it was part of my job to dispose of the ones at the plant. More to the story I guess.