New to forum

[BUD 1]

I am looking at a 1997 corvette convrtible and i find out chev never made one , the person that has the car said it was a concept car and they only made 500 and gave them to exec and some dealers. Is this true or false

[6 Shooter]

[Yoda]

Bud

GM accounted for each and every 1997 including "Pilot Cars" and all "Prototypes" thus the total number built in 1997 does not equal the total number of production Corvettes.

I think GM finally figure out we Corvette Folks are rather anal about our cars, and when it comes to documentation they learned a valuable lesson with the C4 mules also the lack of records that GM kept for the C3 and older is absolutely deplorable..

If 6Shooter has doubts about the claim, I would side with HIM any day when comes to fact or fiction about GM... he knows just a little bit about the General's Mfr Process

Welcome to our Community, enjoy

Bud

[jrose7004]

Could be I guess but I wouldn't want it.

[XLR8]

I'd have to agree with the guys on this one... sounds fishy.
That's not to say 'it never happened' but I'd think it would have been discussed on this board if it had.

Can you post the VIN? That would help us identify it.

And welcome to the
Jane Ann

[timfitz63]

Welcome!

I'll chime in here, if for no other reason, just to throw some other thoughts out there for consideration: I've personally not heard of a cache of any 1997 C5 convertibles that were factory-produced; and I can find nothing on the interweb supporting this guy's claim that any ever existed. But, GM was known to produce pre-production runs of colors that were scheduled for introduction during the subsequent model year (e.g., the fourteen 1998 C5's painted in Navy Blue Metallic, which was a color being introduced in 1999); it's conceivable they built some pre-production convertibles in preparation for the 1998 introduction of that body style. But like "6 Shooter", Bud ("Yoda"), and Jane Ann ("XLR8"), I'm skeptical... And I think you should be as well...

Obviously, anyone can visually verify whether the particular vehicle of which you're speaking is a coupe or convertible; Jane Ann's suggestion about acquiring the VIN is an excellent one; it can be easily decoded to provide the model year. Most likely, it's a '98 or later; if it is indeed a '97, I would speculate that it's most likely a coupe that was custom-altered to be a convertible. Also in that case, more research would be required to verify the claim about a pre-production concept vehicle. Typically, someone making a claim about a vehicle like that (one of only 500 proof-of-concept pre-production vehicles) would have corroborating evidence (paperwork, etc.) to back up that claim. If he has none, I'd suggest to him that he produce some -- that can be independently verified -- if he expects to get a premium price for the vehicle...

[Toms01]

I think that Tim has hit the nail on the head. VIN number is important and if that checks out as a 97 then the current owner should be able to produce documentation proving the authenticity.

Good luck and Welcome to CAC.

[TooFast]

500 '97 verts, never heard that one...I would be suspicious. There were a few companies that turned C5 Z06's into verts with all GM parts, but it was done aftermarket...GM never did any. It could be a very well done aftermarket, although the Z06's were done because they were basically the same body style as the verts, a targa would be a much different conversion.