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Now cleaned up, recharged and as good as factory new, Rice is trying to sell the Corvette on eBay in an
auction that closes on Sunday. As of the evening of Friday December 21st, the highest bid for the car sits
at $23,200. If Rice doesn’t get the price he wants, he told the LA Times that he’ll take it to auction in
January.
A truly remarkable find, this otherwise run-of-the-mill C4 Corvette has quite the history associated with
it. Chances are, and as the bids trickling into eBay currently show, this Corvette could go for close to
what a brand new C4 Corvette would have gone for back in 1989.
How the C7 Corvette Prototype Made It Into Gran Turismo 5
Ever since the C7 Corvette has been mentioned, we’ve
heard how General Motors and Chevrolet wanted to
appeal to a younger audience with the car as it heads
into more than 60 years of production.
That premise has carried over to the final stages before
the seventh generation is unveiled to the public on Jan.
13, 2013 in Detroit.
Clay Dean, global director of advanced design at GM,
recently explained the background behind Chevrolet’s
decision to work with a game designer and allow the
use of a camouflaged C7 in a game before the real car is even available to drive.
Dean explained that the decision comes after several years of market research to find out what drivers
between 15 and 30 are excited about driving. The result of that study was seven concept cars, including
two that were shown at the LA Auto Show recently.
“To learn what a younger audience 15 to 30 thinks has been fascinating,” Dean said, “and what we found
not surprisingly is that one of the first places they get exposed to an automobile are in games like we see
right behind us. They spend a lot of time online, they spend a tremendous amount of time on computers.
It’s a very natural place for them to be, and certain games resonate very highly.”
That work on the concept cars led to a unique partnership between a game designer and a car
manufacturer.
The designers of Gran Turismo 5 have long been social friends of General Motors officials in California.
“We know them very well,” Dean said, “and over the last few years, we’ve talked to them about projects
and opportunities to work together. And we’ve never found anything that really worked until the new
Corvette.”
Mark Reuss, president of General Motors North America, said at the auto show that 2013 promises to be
a big one for GM, with the launch of 13 new models next year, including the Silverado, Impala, and
Corvette.
“All I can tell you right now is that the new Corvette will offer an entirely new driving experience, one
that’s refined and redefined from the car that you know today as the Corvette,” Reuss said. “There are
just a handful of engineers authorized to drive the Corvette test vehicles on our proving grounds, and you
can tell right away which ones they are – they’re the ones wearing the permanent smiles!”