LS7 Swapped Pro Touring Corvette C3
Having purchased this 1969 Corvette through eBay only to find out it was in horrendous shape upon arrival, this owner decided to turn lemons into lemonade!
The C3
Having been in production since the late '60s and into the early '80s, many consider the C3 Corvette to be the most successful generation of America's sports car ever. And if the ultra-long production run doesn't earn it that distinction, the fact that it blazed a path in many ways for all future generations of the Corvette certainly should. And for Paul Buffoni, having been born in 1968, the third-gen 'Vette was a childhood dream.
Photos: Hot Rod
eBay Adventures
So when it was time for him to find a new daily driver, the C3 Corvette was his vehicle of choice. Of course, creature comforts and reliability were always going to be a must-have. Therefore, a restomod build was the direction Buffoni chose to go with this endeavor. His search on the web brought him to this particular example, listed as a 'mild pro-touring build.' He decided to take a leap of faith and believe the seller's description of the car, purchasing it sight-unseen, and having it shipped to his home in Wisconsin.
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Not As Promised
He decided to take a leap of faith and believe the seller's description of the car, purchasing it sight-unseen, and having it shipped to his home in Wisconsin. When the car finally arrived, he realized the seller had in fact been exaggerating the condition of the vehicle. Not only was it cosmetically in need of a thorough freshening up, but it was also mechanically a complete mess. Not even safe to drive around the block!
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Cross-Roads
At this point, Buffoni had two options. He could sell the remains of the 1969 'Vette and rid himself of the headache, or he could build it back from the ground up. And although he'll admit he should probably have taken the first option, he decided to create the ultimate daily driving C3 Corvette restomod, instead. And for that, he enlisted the help of Nick Gaylord ofTop Line Design and Speed in Mukwonago, Wisconsin.
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Getting to Work
Before getting to sorting the mess that was the poor old Corvette's underpinnings, the project was kicked off by getting the exterior style dialed in. Once things were good to go in that department, it was time to give the build's mechanical elements a few upgrades.
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Reliable Performance
Along with the 7.0-liter LS7 V8, a lot of other performance parts were adopted from the C6 Z06. The gorgeous C3 body, covered in Ballistic Blue paint is suspended on Speedray front suspension kit with a combo of DSE springs and JRi shocks. The flared fenders house 18 x11-inch wheels at the front and massive 18 x12s at the rear. The stock motor's 500 horses are transferred down to the ground via an automatic transmission with paddle shifters and Detroit Speed DECALink IRS rear diff with 3.42 gears.
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Boringly Reliable
Being a daily driver, an automatic transmission seems like the natural choice, as ill-fitting as it may feel with the rest of the build. The powertrain and drivetrain maintain their factory settings. "The engine is bone-stock. On a car like this, 500bhp is plenty, and I wanted this drivetrain to be just boringly reliable as OEM stuff usually is," Buffoni remarks. And boringly reliable is often a winner in our book.
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