1982 marked the end of the long running C3 Corvette. First introduced in 1968 it had soldiered on through the dark days of the 1970s and into the 1980s. 1983 was supposed to herald the entrance of the new and much more modern C4 Corvette but quality and manufacturing trouble plagued General Motors on the project so there actually was no 1983 model year Corvette released to the general public. That being said, the focus of the video below is on the 1982 Corvette and specifically the 1982 Collector’s Edition model which was a paint and stripe package for the most part.
Being that engineers and designers had so many years to refine and work on the Corvette chassis, it is no surprise that it was pretty well sorted (for its era) by the time that they pulled the plug on the model. You can hear some funny stuff in this video like “high tech” leaf spring, and some signing praise about the 16-second, 84-mph quarter mile shot made at 75-80 Dragway. This car had a 350 and an automatic. The engine was equipped with the legendarily not great Crossfire fuel injection which was a factory cross ram that used a pair of TBI units on top of the intake. You know the jokes so we’ll stop there.
The price of the car was $24,000 in 1982. Seems hilarious, right? In a sign of how weird the economic times were back then it was about twice what a Corvette cost in 1978! In today’s money, the $24,000 that this Corvette sold for is worth $59,952 and that’s about where you are going to be if you buy a Vette on the lower end of the option scale these days. That’s kind of an interesting fact.
The car weighed 3,400lbs. The cars today weigh between 33 and 3600 depending on how you option them. How about fuel economy. The 1982 Vette was rated for 19/26. Today’s zooty machine with all the aero and technology? 17/29!
It is easy for us to swipe at cars like the 1982 Corvette when we hold them against our modern day standard but the weird thing is, by the context of their era, they were good cars. Seems crazy to us as well! Watch this video and check out the review. They thrash it pretty good.
