Imagine buying a 1982 Corvette and parking it in a garage, then never driving it or even washing it for the next 42 years.
That’s exactly what happened to this Collector Edition that’s been sitting in a northeast Ohio building since the original owner picked it up at the dealership and drove it home where it joined a white 1978 with 1,599 miles and another ’78 Pace Car with 293 miles. The temporary tag is even still in place!
As we’ve been sharing with you in earlier stories, the guys at WD Detailing have already spent hours and hours cleaning up those two nasty ’78s and shared the hard work on their YouTube channel. Now in their latest drop, they’re showing the results of their extensive clean-up efforts on the ’82, which has an incredible 33.3 miles on the odometer. They believe it may be the lowest-mileage CE on the planet, and it’ll be interesting to see if anybody pops up to contest that notion. We wouldn’t be surprised to discover there’s a car with just the single-digit factory miles, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
As you might imagine, despite the low mileage, four decades’ worth of dirt and grime have left the beautiful silver beige paint of this special Corvette looking pretty grungy, but the guys at WD Detailing soon have it looking brand new, especially inside where the car already smelled new as soon as they first opened the door.
As you might expect, even with 33 miles, a car can get damaged over such a long period of storage. This one has a slight scrape in a common place – in the center of the nose, and another flaw is the emblem on the gas tank lid that is bent and raised up from the body. Other than that, though, this car is apparently in great condition.
The guys didn’t share the actual VIN, but Nino – the person who found them in the barn in the first place – tells them it’s one of the last C3s ever built. He also notes that the original owner was a U.S. farmer, and he’s asking other farmers out there who have Corvettes to leave a comment on the channel.
We’re not a farmer, but we do love watching these videos. It’s almost like opening a Christmas present because, as Forrest Gump would say about his box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. In this case, other than a few mice nests under the air cleaner cover, this Collector Edition proved to be a very nice gift indeed.