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Saturday, August 13, 2011

1984 Corvette: Intelligent design or bugly?


Corvette sold for parts, goofy, giant dash pad intact. Scoring a cheap Vette at the local car auction is everyones' dream. I had a chance to live the dream when I spotted this 1984 Chevrolet Corvette at a Birmingham, Alabama wrecker company up for bid. The faded silver bullet suffered some front end damage and was minus the 350 cubic inch, 205hp engine that makes early C4s forgettable. One glance at the bulbous, 4-inch thick passenger's side dash pad and I knew this Corvette was doomed. Another eBay parts car, to be resold in bits and pieces, with the remnants sent to the scrap yard or landfill. 


Insert your joke here or leave a comment below. The '84 Corvette dash pad is embarrassing.



Quit your complaining... But its a Corvette!
  Chevrolet completely redesigned the Corvette for the 1984 model year. Forward thinking designers and engineers equipped the car with revolutionary, (for the time), handling, braking and safety features. The dash pad was GM's idea to meet future Federal safety guidelines as a passive restraint system. The restraint proposal was eventually dropped by the Reagan administration but GM, in a hurry to get the 1984 model out the door, went ahead and built the new Corvettes with a safety feature like no other. 

All Corvettes should have round tail lights.



How many 1984 Corvettes were built?
  The new '84 plastic fantastic reached the second highest production total for Corvettes with 51,547. Only the 1979 model topped it in sales at 53,807 built. Buyers were eager to get back into a Vette after the aborted 1983 model year. Drivers rocked out to Van Halen and overlooked the giant dash pad as they gazed deeply into their digital dash. 
  Absence makes the heart grow fonder but in hindsight would you pay the base '84 Vette sticker price of $21,800 again?



– Jody Potter, junkyardlife

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1984 Corvette with 4-speed Automatic transmission.

Where did this '84 Vettes engine go? My guess, this was a theft recovery.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

IMO, cars have come a long way to becoming nondescript and boring since 1884.