This 1980 Chevrolet Sports Car Body Experiment Was Immediately Rejected
If you close your eyes and think about your favorite sports car, I bet you see a two-door coupe or roadster. That’s because four-door cars are known as sports sedans. Even though Chevrolet, Dodge, and Ford offer plenty of four-door models that put the pedal to the metal with high-performance trim levels, they don’t feel like purist options. One Chevrolet sports car learned this lesson pretty quickly upon being rejected in the 1980s.
Here’s Why Sports Cars Traditionally Have Two Doors
The oldest sports car in continuous production today is the Chevrolet Corvette, which debuted as a two-door roadster in 1953. With a truly athletic nature, it features a lightweight two-seat design that prioritizes performance over comfort and practicality. Four-door configurations do make it much easier to bring your kids and all their stuff along for the ride.
However, four-door cars also sacrifice performance. The two-door body style is important for improving a car’s power-to-weight ratio. Crucial pounds are saved by eliminating the rear seat space and extra metal. Without extra doors, cars benefit from faster acceleration, better braking performance, and improved fuel economy.
The design also features a shorter wheelbase for improved structural rigidity. Fewer openings mean less flexing under hard cornering, and the stiffer chassis provides sharper steering. Also, the sports car gains a better turning radius for a more agile performance.
The design is optimal for better aerodynamics. There’s more freedom to design low, sloping rooflines to cleanly slice through the air. However, some sports cars do have a 2+2 layout that contains tiny rear seats behind the first row, but they still only feature two doors. This can lower insurance costs or may be required to meet homologation rules.
The 1980 Chevy Corvette America Went Large
In the 1980s, the Chevy Corvette had a bit of a Frankenstein moment with a four-door configuration, and it was rejected as one ugly beast. It was only a test, and it’s safe to say that it failed with flying colors. The standard C3 Corvette was strictly a two-seater vehicle and was facing a tough economic climate.
Fuel regulations and rising emission standards significantly reduced the Corvette’s power, and a redesign wasn’t in the budget. So, General Motors decided to experiment with broadening the Corvette’s appeal to families by adding two more doors, seats, and extending the wheelbase by 30 inches to provide the extra space for those who needed it. Namely, families.
General Motors officially sanctioned the project but handed it off to California Custom Coach, a third-party builder in Pasadena, California. This gave General Motors a smart way to distance itself from the project if the concept failed, as it didn’t generate a lot of street support. It must have been a smart move, because the Corvette America has since been buried and forgotten.
Not much planning went into turning the roadster into a sedan. It involved taking two donor Corvette models and literally chopping them in half to weld them together. It maintains the signature T-Top roof over the rear passengers and looks like a traditional sports sedan. The project was initially greenlighted to build 40 production models per year.
Only Six Corvette America Models Were Made
Including the prototype, only six production Chevy CorvetteAmerica models were built, and the project was quickly canceled. Chevrolet fans and other sports car enthusiasts couldn’t believe how the body style turned the iconic two-seater into a bulky sedan. The bulky part is literal, as the wheelbase extension added 500 lbs to the 1980 small-block V8’s load.
It used the L48 350 cubic-inch (5.7-liter) V8 engine with 195 hp and 285 lb-ft of torque to deliver an underwhelming 0 to 60 mph time of 9.1 seconds. On top of being sluggish, it suffered from build quality issues such as weld cracking, body flex, wiring issues, water/fluid leaks, and brake system failures.
Many Chevrolet fans also found the Corvette America to be insanely expensive. It had a starting price of about $35,000. The standard base model Corvette had an original MSRP of $13,000, so upgrading to the four-door model nearly tripled the cost. Plus, due to limited builds, finding custom replacement parts was also extremely pricey.
People who wanted an economical sports sedan felt other options were better than the Corvette America. For example, they could opt for the 1980 BMW 5 Series, Chevrolet Caprice, Toyota Cressida, or AMC Eagle for more practical savings. The BMW 5 Series, in particular, delivered a thrilling performance.
But A Few Collectors Throw Serious Money At The Four-Door Corvette
As you can imagine, finding a 1980 Chevy Corvette America is extremely rare. That’s the main factor driving its value. Historians estimate that only two examples survive today, and they are in private collections. In 2018, one model was listed for sale at $214,000, and that felt steep for such an abomination.
About 40,614 regular models were produced in 1980. Standard two-door 1980 Corvette models can be found at much cheaper prices, ranging from about $14,450 to over $40,000 depending on quality, condition, and specs. The average price for well-maintained models and daily drivers hovers around $21,800.
Only 5,726 1980s Corvette models were equipped with the four-speed manual transmission, making this configuration more valuable. Only about 576 of those manual models were paired with the more powerful L82 engine. Models built for California with the restricted 305 cubic-inch V8 engine typically hold the least value.
Source: CORV SPORT, How Stuff Works, Hagerty
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