350 miles in a C4

I was tasked with delivering an 84 Vette to the Portland swap meet so it could be sold. Sounded a lot better than being in the tow rig F250 with the trailer and listening to the godawful racket of a powerstroke churning away for hours so I jumped at the chance.

It was a one owner 60K mile car picked up for challenge money. They thought it would be an easy flip. Wrong! No one wants one of these. It was actually kicked out of the swap meet for being too new so I had to drive it back as well.

My impressions. Dear lord every surface of the interior made me long for an old VW rabbit. Everything felt wrong or just gross. The passenger dash pad is ludicrous. The headliner was just like touching a microfiber cloth. Who the hell decided on the control layout. Seriously? wiper switch on the door panel? I lived through the 80's and never want to look at a digi dash again. The feel of a GM turn signal switch will haunt my dreams. I couldn't decide if it felt like breaking a stick of celery or bending a barbie doll knee but every time I used it I winced.... Exactly like every other GM turn switch I have ever used. Seats did feel nice and suportive though.

But good lord that thing ate up the miles. For being the dreaded crossfire motor with 4+E auto it certainly felt powerful. Kickdown was instantaneous and it always felt like it had enough oomph to impress. Even mashing the throttle at 80+ it just got up and went.

If you could make it not look like a satin jacket and gold chain mobile and change pretty much every thing about the interior I would totally have one. Managed 26mpg average on the freeway and when I got out I realized I could have gone another state without fatigue. A third pedal would be awesome in there.

It is really making me rethink my recalcitrance to put a V8 in the Falcon. I might start shopping for an explorer motor soon.

When I got home I handed the keys to my GF and let her drive it to the store. Her words were "I feel like an old hesher burnout in this thing and its awesome. Can we get a RATT tape and blast it while we drive it?"

A definite love/hate experience with the car.

Gold chain mode disengaged, because C4 race car.

digital dashs now are good, because they are regular ordinary looking dashs but digital not the 1980s star wars E36 M3 they used to have.

Someone in the kit car industry could make money with a well thought out radiator/motor mount/header kit and a custom dash/console/door panel kit that would let someone swap in a Silverado 4.8/5.3/6.0l and use it's gauge cluster into a C4. A 5.3/nv3500 would work with the tall rear end ratio and certainly not break the bank.

Is there a car like the Factory Five Cobra or the Exocet that uses the C4 as a donor? I kind of want to pick one up to drive until I want to gouge my eyes out and then take apart to make something better.

my brother-in-law bought a 1985 for big money back in the 1990's. He passed away and his kids thinks it's still a high dollar car so it sits in some garage and hasn't been driven in years. Automatic too.

mazdeuce wrote: Is there a car like the Factory Five Cobra or the Exocet that uses the C4 as a donor? I kind of want to pick one up to drive until I want to gouge my eyes out and then take apart to make something better.

Not really as exciting as a Cobra or an Exocet, but they sell kits to adapt the C4 suspension and drive trains to Tri-fives. A 55 Chevy 210 that handles like a vette is on my automotive bucket list.

mazdeuce wrote: Is there a car like the Factory Five Cobra or the Exocet that uses the C4 as a donor? I kind of want to pick one up to drive until I want to gouge my eyes out and then take apart to make something better.

cobrareplicas.com sells a C3-based kit, but I happen to have the current issue (last) of Kit Car Builder and its 2014 "Cobra Guide" listing all known kit manufacturers and they show no C4 based kits. Yet. Granted, it's getting to the point where a C4 based kit would make more sense than a C3. People are starting to restore even late C3's.

Mongoose Motorsports sells a Corvette Grand Sport kit that uses C4 bits, but it isn't cheap by any means. It would be a very nice car though.

I will admit, your review has sent me out to CL. Seems that easily found are not perfect but completely drivable '84-'86 Vettes for $5-$7k. Most are automatics and tend to have 80-130k miles.
I suspect that some searching or some negotiating could drive the price closer to $3-$5k
I had not realized. Sure these are not the "super-cars" that some years were but could still be fun for a summer touring car and occasional driver.

Your description of the GM turn signal is spot on. I lolzed.

bear in mind that interior was designed in the late 70's and early 80's. the first c4 prototype i saw that was almost spot on to the finished product was from 77 or 78. could you imagine the mind blowing futureness if someone saw that in 77? it was a giant leap enough to put on sale in 83(yes, i know no 83's but 84 cars went on sale in early 83). with that, if you want the squared off lines with a good interior, get a 90. that's the perfect combo right there.

Can you put the later C4 interior into the early C4?

JohnRW1621 wrote: I will admit, your review has sent me out to CL. Seems that easily found are not perfect but completely drivable '84-'86 Vettes for $5-$7k. Most are automatics and tend to have 80-130k miles. I suspect that some searching or some negotiating could drive the price closer to $3-$5k I had not realized. Sure these are not the "super-cars" that some years were but could still be fun for a summer touring car and occasional driver. Your description of the GM turn signal is spot on. I lolzed.

I have to be honest, I'm kind of shocked people are asking that much for them.

I think the C4 would make a great donor. I had a C4 chassis sitting around and a Kellison J5 coupe body. I'm in the process of fitting it to the C4 chassis. This required splitting the body down the middle and widening it by 5 inches. I'm in the middle of doing that now. In the picture some old wheels and tires that I had laying around were placed for effect. They are not the ones that will be used.

I've had a couple of heart attacks recently. The last one was 2 weeks ago. I'm recovering but I hadn't been feeling great for awhile. I've been moving slowly on my projects because of that. I'm passing this on to a body many friend of mine to finish up. Then molds will be pulled by another friend that owns a fiberglass company.

[URL=http://s1143.photobucket.com/user/jmcbigbelly/media/kellisonsidefinalmockup_zpsa0bf1e7b.jpg.html][/URL]

My dad had a Kellison brochure with a silver J5 on the cover...dang, I wish I knew where that was....

In reply to jmc14:

Holy moly that looks sweet. Speedy recovery so you can finish it!

Ive driven c4s and to me they suffer the same thing as miatas do for me: They only make sense when you're driving them hard. It's worse in the vette. Pretty crappy for a street car. But then again, most people don't agree with me on the miata anyway, so maybe they'll like the c4 too. I like looking at its undercarriage more than i like driving it casually. Anything you'd rather be staring at then driving is kind of a tease, i think.

the only good parts on an 84-86 Vette are the 4+3 manual transmission and... well, that's about it... the suspension, brakes, and interior got upgraded in 87, which is right about when the engines started getting good. that being said, if i could pick up an early C4 cheap i'd grab it... throw the disco dash away, swap in an LS of some flavor, upgrade to the later brakes, and go have me some fun.

I had a serious love/hate relationship with the 88 that Cotton now owns. Z51 suspension bits, rebuilt/upgraded engine and it was a hoot. They do like to eat wheel bearings when driven in anger. The brakes are great, the handling is amazing for a car of it's age but the interior. Seriously... WTF? There's no room for a dead pedal for the drviver and god forbid he has wide feet. Heel/Toe is no problem because if the brake pedal goes down too far you'll be on the gas anyway. The digital dash was fun, for the first 5 minutes. Then it gets tedious.

Not a bad car in the 4-6k range. IMO, I wouldn't spend more than that. They love to be flogged and it's a good chassis for that. Hell, a C4 would make a great drift car. Sitting on the rear wheels controlling the oversteer is pretty darn easy because you know the INSTANT it starts to step out.

Unfortunately everything is expensive to replace, so find a good starter car or be faced with a multitude of stupid E36 M3 nickel and diming you to death. There are days I wish I'd kept it, then I come out of my drunken stupor and realize how silly that is!

$1700 not drivable does run

http://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/cto/4384454542.html

Makes me think the later c4 cars might not be as bad.

Gasoline wrote: $1700 not drivable does run http://atlanta.craigslist.org/atl/cto/4384454542.html

i almost bought a runner 86 with high miles and a dash that didn't work for $500 a decade ago... i wanted to buy it just to snag the 4+3 to put into my Nova, but i had no way to get it the 50 miles home..

Late C4s are much more civilized. The LT1 engine makes 300 hp (LT4 in the manual '96 makes 330), real 6-speed manual, the interior is much improved and the video game digital dash is gone. As a street car it really eats up the miles, and I personally like the more rounded styling of the late C4 better than the more angular early cars. I'm not as impressed with the brakes, but the car handles very well, and it's hard to argue with 30 mpg highway with that much power. The luggage space is kind of limited, but if you get the right sized bags it's OK. The C5 is a better car, but a late C4 can be pretty darn nice for the money. Low mileage ones go around $10K - $12K, more or less.

I daily drove my '87 for several years, loved every minute of it

I always thought they were awesome looking cars.. until you looked inside. I never did figure out how GM made sign a large car have such a small interior.. and I will not get into that awful dash design. I disliked that back in the 80s when it first came out