Good advice and patience

[John M.]

I am in my second year of membership with the NCRS and am still looking for my Corvette. The best advice I received from this site and membership was, "buy books, read and educate yourself, drive different years, find out what speaks to you, exercise patience and don't settle". This advice has served me well in my search for the perfect for me C4. I actually keep a copy of the corvette black book, and copies of both operation and PV manuals for the entire C4 series in my daily driver in case I run across a promising candidate. That only sounds strange to me when I read it in print! My point here is to thank the membership for sound advice and the many stories and articles that I have enjoyed to date. I have no doubt I will find what I am looking for and the search itself has been fun and educational.


Regards.
John

[Ed S.]

Re: Good advice and patience

John,
You definitely were given very good advice and it sounds like you are being very patient. I can tell you from experience that your approach is sound and has a high probability of resulting in success and satisfaction. I searched for nearly 3 years before I found the perfect C2 for myself. Among other things, what I learned while I was in the market is that the really good ones go fast. So, you have to be prepared to act fast - but not hastily. At least 2 good ones (for me) slipped through my hands because I waited to long to act. The one I purchased went on the internet on a Tuesday, I contacted the seller on Wednesday, drove 1000 miles to inspect it and closed the deal on Friday. Good luck.

[Frank D.]

Re: Good advice and patience

Quite true. I searched for my split window for 2-1/2 years and when I had completely given up (of course); out of the blue a Corvette friend in Ohio offers his up for sale at a killer price. Jumped on a plane, inspected it, transferred the full sale price to the gent via bank wire within an hour.

You have to be 'primed' to "seal the deal" on a minute's notice but not so feverish that you make a bad purchase; a touchy balance.

[John M.]

Re: Good advice and patience

Thanks for your advice gentlemen. I did in fact miss a solid, well documented car because I delayed committing to the sale. Lesson learned!

[Patrick H.]

Re: Good advice and patience

John,

What are you looking for in a C4?

[Art B.]

Re: Good advice and patience

As an original owner of an early C4, I can tell you that GM made a lot of changes to the C4 from '84 to '96. I still like my '86 Coupe but the later improvements were very good. You can get a well maintained C4 but it will take some looking. Overall, I think the C4s are excellent cars both in styling and engineering.

[Mark H.]

Re: Good advice and patience

You have to be 'primed' to "seal the deal" on a minute's notice but not so feverish that you make a bad purchase; a touchy balance.

Or as the great basketball coach at UCLA John Wooden used to put it, "Be quick, but don't hurry."
As far as C4's go, my own .02, an excellent bet right now would be ZR1's. Back in 1990 that car sold for $60,000 and that was a LOT of money back then. They were the best Corvette ever built up to that point and a lot of guys bought them and put them away (ala '78 Pace Cars) just waiting for them to appreciate. Filing it under "the best laid plans" along came the C5 Z06, then the C6 Z06 and ZR1 and that pretty much killed those ideas. But as a result you can find a lot of low mileage well maintained C4 ZR1s usually in the low to mid-20k range and bang for the buck I don't think you can them with the proverbial stick.