Rare C3 Duntov Turbo Corvette up for Grabs in UK Auction

One of just 86 produced, this pristine Duntov Turbo Corvette is headed to auction and presents a rare opportunity.

As most Corvette fans are well aware, the later 1970s into the 1980s was a dark time for cars in general, including America’s sports car, at least in terms of performance. Skyrocketing gas prices and increasing emissions requirements effectively killed the horsepower race we had enjoyed up to that point, but folks like Zora Arkus-Duntov – father of the Corvette – were determined to do whatever they could to build and sell fast cars. And that’s precisely why this rare C3 Duntov Turbo Corvette up for grabs at UK auction house HandH exists.

The Duntov Turbo Corvette was born from a collaboration between Duntov himself and an Ohio-based company called American Custom Industries (ACI), which produced replacement Corvette body panels and completed convertible conversions once GM stopped offering them. Duntov had always wanted to build a turbocharged Corvette, and this gave him the chance to do just that, as he had been shot down internally over the move’s high costs and limited market of potential customers.

All Duntov Turbo Corvettes featured a wider body with white paint and a red interior, and production was expected to be limited to just 200 units, all for the 1980 model year. ACI beefed up the suspension with Bilstein shocks and gave those cars Goodyear Wingfoot tires, digital secondary gauges and other unique interior touches, and of course, a turbo. That latter part proved to be somewhat difficult to live with as it generated a ton of heat and even melted the car’s rubber hoses, so ACI added additional cooling and steel braided hoses as a solution.

The result was an additional 70 horsepower for GM’s 350 V8 on 7 pounds of boost, but the only transmission option was an automatic, which hindered performance a bit. Problem was, all of this was expensive, and the Duntov Turbo cars had a sticker price that started out at $30,000 – double the MSRP of a base 1980 Corvette coupe. As a result, just 86 are estimated to have been built and sold in total.

Thus, this rare machine is truly a sight to behold for the simple fact that it’s still around. This particular car was exported to the UK back in 2014 and has just 20,536 original miles on the clock. It’s a truly cool piece of Corvette history, and certainly not something that we see pop up for sale very often.

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Photos: HandH

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