Much like Hayden Christensen and Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill found it difficult to find good jobs after Star Wars. Hamill did rack up some notable credits during his time fighting the Empire, though. Chief among them was Corvette Summer, a sunny and joyful romp to Vegas in a heavily modified example of America’s own sports car. If you’ve lusted after the hero car from that film, this could be your chance to own something pretty close.
If you haven’t seen the 1978 film, it starred Mark Hamill as Kenny Dantley, a high-school senior with a passion for cars. Dantley finds a C3 Corvette in a crusher and rebuilds it as part of his high-school shop class. The car ends up as a glowing tribute to everything garish and chrome, but it’s stolen and winds up in Las Vegas. Dantley sets out to recover the vehicle and gets into some amusing scrapes along the way with a woman named Vanessa, played by Annie Potts. In the trailer, Metro Goldwyn Meyer appealed to the Corvette faithful, branding it “A Fiberglass Romance.”
Up for sale on Facebook Marketplace is what appears to be a close simulation of the movie car, rather than one of the two cars built for filming the actual movie. The Colorado-based vehicle reportedly has 44,000 miles on the clock, an automatic transmission, and the owner’s asking for a lofty $75,000. All jokes about Corvette owners aside, let’s take a look at what you’re getting for that massive chunk of cash.
According to the seller, this example was built as a promotional vehicle for the film. It hews closely to the vehicle seen in the movie, with the crazy vented hood and four sealed-beam headlights. It wears a giant light-up Chevy bow-tie emblazoned with the word “Stingray” on the back, and it has flames down the side of the body. Under the hood, it has a 350 cubic-inch V8 paired with a four-speed auto, and we’re told it’s fully serviced and ready to drive away. The Autopian has reached out to the owner for more details on the build and history of the car.
It is easy to spot some differences to the car on the silver screen. The headers on this vehicle still pop out of the fenders and lead to side-outlet exhausts, but they’re a more tangled design compared to the straighter layout seen in the movie. The flames also appear to be more of a solid gold color rather than the more artful airbrushing of the film car. It’s not right-hand-drive like the movie car, either.
Contrast with the movie screenshot above. Easy spots are the different headers and the fact the movie car is right-hand drive.
It’s worth noting that the real movie cars are accounted for at the moment. Both were 1973 models, with MGM getting a main car and a backup model built by Korky’s Kustom Studios in New Jersey. It’s believed that the main car was used for promotional duties before eventually landing in the hands of an Australian collector. It was then modified from its movie-spec appearance. The backup car, meanwhile, is apparently in the hands of a private collector.
It’s believable that this could have been built as a promo car that was “close enough” to the real thing. To that end, the seller presents a certificate of authenticity stating it was part of the Barris Star Car collection and says the car was showcased in places like the Imperial Palace in Vegas to promote the film ahead of release.
Interestingly, though, the same story was told about a similar C3 Corvette sold by Volo Cars quite some time ago. That car looked quite different, with different fenders and flames perhaps the most notable differences. You may want to verify the details independently before you part with $75,000 for the vehicle. In 2007, CorvetteBlogger.com posted a far more obvious replica that was up for sale on eBay. At that time, a poster by the name of Richard Korkes stated that no promotional cars were built for the film.
In any case, at $75,000, you’re getting a steep discount. Street Muscle Mag reported the vehicle was up for sale for a six-figure sum as recently as January.
The same problem always arises with builds like these. They’re not the real thing, so they don’t have some elevated value by virtue of a famous connection. At the same time, it’s kinda fun to drive a cool movie car. The question is, does the cool customization justify the inflated price?
More often than not, it doesn’t. A lot of unofficial movie replicas are poorly built and don’t really live up to their on-screen inspirations. In this case, you could get yourself a C3 Corvette for under $30,000. Examples in decent condition sell for under $20,000 all day long. That would leave you with $55,000 to pay for custom work to get it looking like the Corvette Summer car. It would take you longer, for sure, and some of the custom parts might be hard to replicate. You’d have to factor all that into your cost analysis.
With a car like this, it’s hard to say whether it’s good value or not. On the one hand, $75,000 is a huge amount to pay for a C3 Corvette that might have some vaguely interesting history. On the other hand, it really is pretty close to the Corvette Summer car in many respects, and you might not be able to replicate it for cheaper.
I’m not sure I’d go for it. Sound off with your own educated opinion in the comments.
Image credits: Facebook Marketplace, Corvette Summer
This is revolting to look at. It looks like it was designed by a committee of 8-year-olds who all threatened to cry if their crayon drawing didn’t make it into the final product.
I admire that someone cared enough about an obscure movie to make a close-enough-I-guess replica, this is the kind of build for a movie enthusiast that isn’t a car enthusiast.
If I struck up a conversation with someone driving this, I’d expect to learn a lot about movies and nothing about cars. You don’t cut up a DeLorean into a time machine because you care about John’s vision for the stainless car of the future, French V6’s or the wacky Lotus-built chassis. You’ll never see a Batmobile replica going for a spirited drive.
Nothing wrong with movie buffs, but these kind of builds just don’t appeal at all to me as a car enthusiast.
There’s a phenomenon, I don’t know if it’s been named, but it’s when someone with a great deal of skill and determination builds a vehicle for a reason completely detached from the actual car. For example, that giant Beetle body that was built over a Dodge truck chassis that was on some news channel forever ago, these really involved movie replicas, the couple of literal boat hulls placed over car chassis that you sometimes see photos of, and that Camaro with the body on upside down. The kind of build made by eccentric people who just want to drive around in a rolling conversation starter. What do we name that? It’s not a bad thing, I’m not looking for a derogatory word here, just a name for when someone with little interest in cars is so eccentric or so into something else detached from cars that they’ll even build a vehicle dedicated to it, whether it be a movie, series or just the very idea of standing out.
I always think of those well constructed but functionally useless vehicles as “Art Cars”. You can appreciate them for the skill of the build but I always wonder why they couldn’t use that skill for something useful.
Choppers fall into this category, IMO. Who is going to ride a radial engined motorcycle?
Do we call movie/show/comic replicas fan-art cars?
I’m not sure I’d throw choppers under that umbrella, because they stand apart in the sense that they have their own scene and culture, much like lowriders and stanced cars. Sure, these 3 categories are art, but they deserve their own name apart from “art car” because they’re at the center of their own cultural movements rather than being an accessory to some other interest.
Asking $75K but too cheap and lazy to take decent pictures. Eff no.
I was probably 10 or 11 years old when I first saw this movie, at the time, my grandmother was driving a C3 and my uncle had the C1 he still owns, and even then I thought the movie car was ugly and wondered why anyone would think it looked better than before
One shouldn’t do either of those things IMO.
Just say no!
I remember waking through the the video rental place and seeing that movie on the shelf. Even then (maybe 12 years old?) I thought it was an ugly car. My old man agreed when I show it to him.
Crack Pipe.
Even with the delicate impression of Annie Potts’ butt cheeks in the seats I would have to pass.
Unless it comes with Annie Potts as seen in the movie, no. Even $750 of internet money is too much.
I was 11 when this movie came out and I thought the Vette was cool. My current taste has become much better refined over the last 44 years. I’ll take a driver quality original C3 Vette and pocket the difference in cash.
Why, oh why, would anyone build a replica of this car?
$0 is too high for me to bid on this absolute abomination of a car – I hate every single modification.
Here we go now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dju2ZhJasx4
In the trailer, Metro Goldwyn Meyer appealed to the Corvette faithful, branding it “A Fiberglass Romance.”
Sounds itchy.
We should get Ray Wert’s opinion. I hear he’s had some experience with fiberglass romances.
The rare double case of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines!
Two questions are being asked and the answer to both of them is no.
Sorry, not worth the bucks. This is a Corvette Shunner. Truly an awful movie featuring a garish custom Vette. The only redeeming quality of this drive-in dropout is you didn’t feel like you were missing out on anything by ignoring the screen and moving on to some backseat Olympics.
The one thing the C3 has over all of the models that came after it are its looks. I’ve never found them all that attractive, but that’s usually the first thing someone will mention as its best quality. This possibly related to a movie example has taken a giant dump all over the C3’s best trait. And the seller wants me to pay a premium for it? Even if this was one of the movie cars and still had the indents from Mark Hamill’s Jedi butt cheeks in the seat, this is still a car from a bad and largely forgotten movie. We’re not talking about Doc Brown’s DeLorean here.
Well, if you can’t say anything nice……..
Eh. For me, it’s Frankenstein’s Corvette-based reptile car from Death Race 2000 or nothing!
anybody know why there is a light with an amber lens in the engine compartment?
I’m thinking a good Annie Potts replica would be cool…
I was 18, cruising Van Nuys Blvd. when that movie came out. Nobody cared for either it or the car.
Movie sucked the big one.
Annie Potts though. Works for me.
No RHD… BOOO!!!
But yeah, what a terrible movie. Hamill and Potts tried but there’s only so much you can do with this turkey.
For a real treat, check out Hamill in 1989’s Slipstream, an even bigger stinker that also ensnared Bill Paxton, Robbie Coltrane, F. Murray Abraham, and SIR Ben Kingsley. But hey, it does have cool vehicles!
If somebody buys this, I hope they store it away in a warehouse so we don’t have to risk seeing it.
If I were interested, I’d buy this one instead of building a replica. This one has a more interesting story even if it’s bs.
The troubling part to me is that one of the actual movie cars was purchased and then un-summered by the owner. That seems like an odd choice unless it was just sold off at a studio garage sale in the 80’s and it was cheaper than average corvettes at the time.
+1 for “un-summered”…
Love it! The word craft I mean. Not the car lol
Even if it was fully correct to the movie, I’m gonna pass. I’m fully into white New Balance territory, so I’d rather have a decent, normal C3.
Or a replica of Frankenstein’s car from Death Race 2000!!
I’m sorry, apologies to Mark Hamill who is one of my favorite humans, but Corvette Summer was an absolutely terrible movie and that car was freakin’ hideous in the movie and the replica is potentially even more hideous. No Dice.
To add to the nostalgia, it looks like someone threw in a whole vegas buffet load of overcooked spaghetti under the hood.
And it does look like something done by your average high school kid in shop class.
And he got an “F” for it.