You know that I love finding rare and expensive parts. This time it is an aluminum valley pan from a Z11 427 W-engine. The piece was cast in 1962 and likely was used on a 1963 Z11 engine. The pan is currently for sale on eBay for the low low price of $4,999. The price got me to thinking. What would $4,999 buy a person in 1962 the year that the foundry cast the part. The answers are pretty awesome.
For starters, that money would get you about four semesters of education at Harvard University in Boston. It would have been half the average selling price of a home in America. It would have bought you two average cars outright. It would have bought a LOT of gasoline at the national average price of 28-cents per gallon. It would match almost to the penny the average yearly salary of a typical American that year and it would get you in to just under 5,000 movies on the average ticket price of $1.00. Hell, splurge and buy some popcorn.
The Z11 engines were gnarly and they were used in the lightweight Impala models that Chevrolet was selling for drag racing. The Chevrolets were bad ass but everything I have ever read had talked about the 427ci engines as being kind of temperamental and not as reliable as the 421 Pontiacs and 413 Chryslers. Parts like this are gold to anyone trying to restore a car and we don’t think the $5,000 is out of line. It is a weird part for someone to have without the rest of the engine. Who knows if it was a crafty swap meet find or perhaps owned by someone who had plans to restore or recreate a Z11 car.
We’re not sure if there is a more expensive valley pan on Earth but we’re not sure there’s a cooler one, either.
Link: This Valley Pan For A Z11 427 Engine Is Rare And Expensive – 1962 Vintage
The MSRP on a 1962 Corvette fully loaded including Fuel Injection was less than $4,999
$4,999 in 1962 equals about $41,500 today.
I get that some of these found rare parts are priceless today .However you can shoot for the stars with your price.But its only worth what you can get someone to pay ya.There has to be another half to this correct? Was it for a fuely set up ,or a tunnel ram kind of intake to go with it. And isn’t it just a paper weight with out that other piece ?
This is exactly the type of part that is a candidate for 3D printing. The owner of this part should look into having it replicated and probably be able to sell a boatload and make more than just the one sale of $4,999. And it would also allow more folks to build examples of these legends of the past.