1978 Black/Silver Indy Pace Car,L82, 4-spd, 855 original miles!

1978 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe Description

Black/Silver, with Silver interior, L-82 350/220hp, 4-spd manual transmission.
As most Corvette aficionados know by now, the ’78 Corvette Indy Pace car is credited with starting the Corvette speculation market. The ’78 was the first Corvette to ever pace the Indy 500. So naturally, the boys at GM wanted to cook up something special for race day. Originally, the plan was to build a very limited number of Pace Car replicas to sell to the buying public. The initial amount was to be 30...0 to commemorate the ’53 Corvette’s production run. They would all have special paint, interior, and other modifications. Even the tires were going to be exclusive to the Pace Car! But after doing some calculating, the bean counters decided that some of the mods were going to be too expensive to justify a run on only 300. In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal got word of what was going down in St. Louis and decided to do a story on it. Proclaiming the ’78 Corvette Pace Car as the next great collectible sports car! Well, it didn’t take long before the readers of said article started calling their local Chevy dealer wanting to purchase one of these special “collectible” Corvettes. Thousands of requests were made and many orders were taken. Obviously, many more orders than could be filled. As a result, potential buyers were getting pretty frustrated. During this time, it was decided that Chevrolet would build enough Pace Cars so that every U.S. dealer could get one. So, when all was said and done, approximately 6,500 were built. Still, there were plenty of hurt feelings as cars that were ordered at sticker price, arrived at showrooms with asking prices almost double that in some cases! As a result, lawsuits were filed. And the rest . . . is history.
The rare L-82, 4-spd. Pace Car presented here is one of the nicest examples we’ve ever had in stock! It’s unique in that it’s an original car with only 855 miles from new. But the previous owner went a step further and took the body off the frame (photo documented) and completely detailed the chassis, suspension and drivetrain to show car standards! So, you’ve got the best of both worlds. A Pace Car with beautiful original paint, interior and a fully detailed undercarriage! The car is also heavily documented with the original Tank Sticker all books, manuals, brochures and spare keys all in a beautiful, embossed, leather bound case. And the icing on the cake is it’s a Bloomington Gold and N.C.R.S. Top Flight Award winner! Along with the standard Pace Car items, it’s also equipped with the highly desirable L-82 engine, rare M21 close ratio 4-spd., leather seats and AM/FM/CB Radio. A true collectible Indy Pace Car!