1983 Corvette reality TV

"BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast." (boxerfanatic) 07/09/2019 at 00:57 • Filed to: Corvette, 1983, reality tv

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Did anyone watch this show? What is your impression of the show, and the car?

Curious what the consensus is before I comment with my reaction...

Or if this post gets lost, as History Channel Car Week is sponsoring Jalopnik currently....

pip bip - choose Corrour > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 07/09/2019 at 04:02

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is that Corvette suppose to be a 1983 model?

GLiddy > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 07/09/2019 at 09:32

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Not a Corvette guy.  This just looks wrong.  Can’t put my finger on it.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > pip bip - choose Corrour 07/09/2019 at 13:30

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One guy’s interpretation of what a 1983 Corvette would have been like.

The only remaining 83 Corvette prototype from GM is in the Corvette Museum.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. 07/09/2019 at 14:17

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Ok, my take: I watched the whole show, I am not a huge corvette fan, but I am not anti-Corvette, either. I watched it for the automotive history aspect.

1: this is an 85 shell that is modified. Supposedly chosen because the ‘85 suspension is improved over the 84 car... which in itself should tell us where this is going.

2: the guy insisted on a split window look, which appears to be a fiberglass overlay on the rear hatch. The Corvette designer that he consulted with said that it was a surprisingly complex challenge to do a split-window correctly. The car has no longitudinal spine, nor a tapered boat-tail to justify a split window, it’s a gimmick, not a design feature, and frankly it ruins window graphic of the car.

3: They re-contoured the fenders (the hood, being the top of the front fenders), to be a little more C3-like, as well as a C3 fender vent behind the front wheel... it looks good in itself, but doesn’t look good with those panel gaps around it.

4: They removed the belt-line seam, so the hood shut line doesn’t continue through the door skins anymore, it doesn’t make the whole car seamless, it makes the seams more obvious for not being continuous.

5: they put on ridiculous aftermarket wheels that wouldn’t have been around in 1983 as an available wheel and tire size, and the image shows that even after that, they didn’t adjust the ride height for the different tire diameter.

6: He made a personal decision to forgo the digital gauges that were the new fashion in the early 1980s, even when his staff member even made the point. He wanted to keep analog gauges for being easier to read... but they didn’t use a base model analog dash from the early C4, they cut out a piece of black plastic and put cheap-ass auto parts store gauges in the dash that look like TRASH.

7: They insisted on putting a supercharger on the engine, despite having trouble making it fit, and the foreman complaining about the build through the whole show. They could have kept to mild, invisible tuning but insisted on aftermarket power-adders that didn’t exist, and wouldn’t have been used by the factory in 1983.

8: They painted the car the MORNING OF THE REVEAL, for pete’s sake, and they painted it three-stage pearl white, which also is more modern paint process than they would have had in 1983.

They over-promised and barely delivered just like all the reality TV car shows do, and showed again why I wouldn’t have any of these shops work on a car for me, and kludge it together on an unfeasible deadline. FantomWorks was the only show that didn’t play that dramatized impossible-deadline game stupidity.

They had two GM staffers to evaluate the car, and surprised us with Danny Coker, (The Count from Counting Cars) even though they had so little material for the show that they had him commenting repeatedly throughout the show before the reveal, with the same clip about the 30th Anniversary year of the Corvette having no Corvettes for sale. It was either that, or the shop foreman complaining about the build.

This was not an 83' C orvette. This is a questionably modified 85 Corvette that someone is passing off as a Reality TV show.

The silent hesitation reaction when they drove the car in for the reveal said it all... they got interviewed generically positive reactions from the GM guys after the reveal sequence, and Coker is a reality TV veteran and kept the cameras rolling with a showmanship positive reaction, but I didn’t see a genuinely enthusiastic reaction.

The design decisions were what the guy wanted for himself, and his own opinions, not about what was actually historically accurate, feasible, or likely.

Even as a resto-mod 85 C4 Corvette, without the whole bit about being what an ‘83 Corvette might have been , I would have chosen differently, and come up with something better than this.

He didn’t stick to the design sketch he supposedly liked, he didn’t even consider post-C3 design studies like the AeroVette that preceded the C4 for inspiration.

And the GM staffers talked about how hard it was to make Corvette fit the safety and fuel economy standards, which caused them to miss their production deadline that year... but failed to mention that their efforts caused Pontiac engineers to have to bring in Fiero under the radar as an economy car, rather than a sports car that could have met those regs, and a few years later, C4's shortcomings also got Fiero cancelled to keep Corvette from looking bad.