Unique 1975 Chevrolet C3 Corvette goes under the hammer

This half-a-century-old C3 Corvette was customized upon the request of Frank Milne, the owner of the world’s largest Corvette dealership at the time.

The C3 generation of the Corvette went on sale in 1967 and bowed out of production in 1982, but this example stands out from all the rest. It received all-new bodywork from Jerry Palmer, designer at General Motors who later penned the C4 ‘Vette. He came up with a completely different look for the nose and the tail, taking care to update the sides to match the ends and otherwise distance the C3 from its stock appearance. He also ditched the stock pop-up headlights in favor of the more practical rectangular units, ending up with a more reserved design that didn’t truly catch on until the 1980s.

All prototyping works were conducted using temporary glass-fiber panels. The Corvettes of that era were actually also made of glass-fiber plastic, so redesigning one from scratch wasn’t too difficult. Once complete, the one-off car was delivered to Milne’s dealership and proceeded to spend several year standing there as an exhibit. It then traveled to Europe and spent a few decades in private hands.

As unique as this ‘Vette looks from the outside, it is a stock C3 under the hood. This implies a 5.7-liter V8 linked to a three-speed automatic transmission. The seller says it has 72,400 km (45,000 miles) on the counter and is in fully drivable condition after a recent round of maintenance that saw its carburetor fixed and all liquids replaced.