C5 Corvette Coupe with 300,000 Miles on It Finds a New Home
C5 Corvette Coupe with 300,000 Miles on It Finds a New Home
High-mileage C5 coupe brings a new meaning to the term “driver’s car.”
There are different types of car buyers out there. Some people buy a car as an investment and store it in a climate-controlled garage so its value can build over time. Others buy a car to use it at track events. Then there are those who buy a car to drive it. The people who used to own this C5 Chevrolet Corvette coupe were definitely part of that third group. They put 300,000 miles on it.
That wasn’t the end of the road for it, though. As this video from Youtuber Scotty Kilmer shows, it still had more driving to do.
A young man by the name of Hayden Craig Smith bought it. As you can probably imagine, people think he’s nuts for doing that. He says, “The biggest reason I was OK with buying this car with 300,000 miles on it is because the previous owner … said … the guy before him rebuilt the motor … at 200,000 miles.” The transmission also appears and acts as if it’s been rebuilt.
ALSO SEE: Sometimes You Need to Just Grab the Keys to Your Corvette and Drive
Smith was able to talk the seller down from an asking price of $4,000 to a final price of $3,500. The bad news is that he had to eat up some of those savings by buying a desperately needed new radiator.
This ‘Vette has been cosmetically refreshed, too. It used to be orange, but a previous owner had the entire car taken apart and resprayed with white paint. What were once pop-up headlights are now fixed units with eyelids painted to match the body. C6 ZR1 wheels fill all four corners. Out back, a quad-tip Borla exhaust lets out the rejuvenated LS1’s battle cry.
As you can imagine, the body isn’t perfect. The passenger-side mirror is busted. So is one of the corners on the rock-chipped front bumper. According to Smith, “The guy before me actually had hit a bunny going 120 miles an hour.” (What a way to go.)
#gallery-1 {
margin: auto;
}
#gallery-1 .gallery-item {
float: left;
margin-top: 10px;
text-align: center;
width: 50%;
}
#gallery-1 img {
border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;
}
#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {
margin-left: 0;
}
/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
The interior looks just about how you’d expect it to look after 20+ years and traveling the distance between Los Angeles and New York City more than 100 times. Both seats are ripped and the driver’s door armrest has its own mouth now.
Does Smith regret his purchase? Not at all. He already considers himself a ‘Vette guy. He doesn’t mind the damage because he’s going to daily drive his new ‘Vette anyway. Bunnies, you’ve been warned.
