C3 Corvette Sportwagon: Cool Collectible or Forgettable Abomination?
C3 Corvette Sportwagon: Cool Collectible or Forgettable Abomination?
This rare, original Greenwood-converted Corvette Sportwagon won’t win any drag races, but it is interesting.
There was a time when wagons were cool. At least in the minds of some, we suppose. Few vehicle styles in history conjure up the kinds of mixed feelings that your average old school family hauler does. So when we stumbled across this Greenwood-converted C3 Corvette Sportwagon on Craigslist via Barn Finds recently, it got us thinking. Do we love it, or do we hate it?
We’ll preface our little scientific experiment by noting that there aren’t exactly a ton of these Corvette wagons out there in the world. Although Greenwood wasn’t the only company producing them, they quite honestly did the best job. The bodylines here match up much better than some of the other attempts out there, looking nearly OEM. They weren’t the first or the last wagon-makers, but they were arguably the best.
Greenwood’s conversion kits were sold through Eckler’s catalogs with or without the side windows, or “Panelwagons” as they called them. Buyers could opt for either the upper-half rear section by itself, or the entire rear clip, which made the job much easier.
According to the seller, this particular Corvette Sportwagon was converted by Greenwood themselves, which presumably makes it more desirable. And most consider Greenwood conversions the cream of the crop, so there’s that.
Still, the asking price for this particular wagon is (was, as the listing has since been removed) a reasonable $7k. It isn’t in terrible shape for that price, either. The paint could use a redo, and there’s a lot of cleaning/touch up work here if you want it to be perfect. But overall, this Corvette is in pretty nice original condition.
Even the tucked cloth seats look decent, and would look even better with a good deep clean. The seller does note that the automatic transmission is leaking, but that’s nothing a simple rebuild couldn’t fix. The engine has received a couple of upgrades in the form of a cam and headers, but it’s still likely painfully slow. And at least to us, that’s the biggest downfall to the plastic bumper ‘Vettes, wagon or no. They’re just way underpowered.
But hey, that’s nothing that can’t be fixed easily and rather cheaply. Personally, we’d stuff a turbo’d LS under the hood of this thing and go have some fun. If nothing else, you can bet that you’ll be the only one in town with a Corvette wagon. And that alone makes this C3 pretty cool in our book.
