Corvette Forum Member Brings Wrecked C7 Back from the Brink

Luke42_02 rebuilt a wrecked C7 Corvette most people would have given up on.

Corvette Forum member Luke42_02 loved the C7 from the day he first saw it, but didn’t have $55,000 to drop on one at his local dealer. Since he does enjoy working with his hands and fixing things, he started a search for a wrecked C7 that he could rebuild without breaking the bank. He found one, and a year and a week after taking delivery of the badly wrecked Corvette, Luke cruised his showroom-fresh car 1,500 miles to the Corvette Factory/Museum in Bowling Green.

The best part of this, besides one less wrecked car being crushed, is that all of you in the forum helped. As thanks, Luke has promised to write a bunch of how-to posts about the restoration. He also gives a shout out to Trunk Monkey Parts, saying, “They were the only outfit that treated me right 100% of the time. I simply cannot say enough about the quality of their character and the helpfulness of their staff… You need to be dealing with someone you can trust.”

CHECK OUT: What Forum Members Are Saying About This Impressive Salvage Job

From the look of the pictures, this 2015 C7 Corvette, with just 13,000 miles on it, was hit in the front and the back, or possibly spun at freeway speeds and tagged at both ends. It seems as if the doors and roof were the only body panels not destroyed! Besides all the body work, the front metal bumper bar was bent, the rear bumper bar was torn completely off, and the last few inches of frame rail were crushed. Wisely, Luke discovered GM produces the C7 frame in sections, and you can cut off the last section and reweld it just as strong as new.

This was a momentous task for an amateur to tackle, but Luke is used to fixing much more complex machinery; he’s a doctor, after all.

Not including his own labor, this Corvette ended up costing Luke less than $35,000, $34,317 to be exact. That seems like a pretty good deal, considering how nicely it turned out. Go check out more pictures, and give props in this forum thread!

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