This is our latest 4 wheeled baby, a 1981 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe. We bought it in January, 2002 from well known Northern California classic car dealer, restorer and customizer Joe Cruces.

The car is mostly stock mechanically: 5.7 liter (350 CID) L81 small block Chevy V8 motor mated to a TH350 automatic transmission. It had just over 42,000 miles on the clock when we brought it home, and the Carfax report I ran on it revealed only 2400 of those miles put on since 1994. According to Joe, the previous owner had planned an engine upgrade some time ago but never got around to it. Before losing interest though, he sunk a whole lotta cash into the paint and wheels.

The assembly plant build sheet and window sticker copy I obtained for it shows the original color to be "Charcoal Metallic" (basically black). The new color is a beautiful Mother-of-Pearl White. Whoever laid this down really knew what he - or she - was doing! I had to dig pretty deep to find any evidence of the charcoal.

In the time we've had it a few changes have been made. The brake calipers leaked, so I replaced basically the whole system: new stainless steel sleeved calipers with o-ring pistons, lines, hoses, and master cylinder. This was the first complete disc brake job I'd ever done, but everything went mostly according to plan with no unexpected surprises, and now when I step on the pedal the thing actually comes to something resembling a complete stop.

The interior needed work too. It was originally the same charcoal color as the factory exterior. It probably looked ugly when new, and 22 years of wear and sun exposure did nothing to improve the appearance. While Pam and I were in Florida on a motorcycle vacation in the spring of '02, we stopped at Eckler's in Titusville and ordered a new carpet set and leather seats in a very nice shade of silver. I didn't get around to installing it until almost a year later, but the results are impressive (IMHO anyway) Click the link on the left to see some before and after pics.

Sometime down the road, I may drop in a GM ZZ4 crate motor or maybe rebuild the stock engine  but for now and the foreseeable future it's going to stay just the way it is.

 ©2002 Gene and Pam Leis