7 Things you might hear at a Corvette show
Transcript [Music] hello everybody welcome back to Lyles Friday into the world podcast although it seems we've get closer to the end of the world now but we're still playing with Corvettes every day which is what's really important I don't have any new cool products to show you today because mostly manufacturing is frozen everywhere but hey I did want to share with you a humorous list of the 7 things you will hear at a Corvette Show or swap meet now these are things that over 20 years I have heard countless times and I just want to for my own sanity comment on these things one of those claims is that their car has never seen rain okay the fact that I have witnessed grown men at a Corvette show running to their car through the rainstorm to get a waterproof cover put over it drenching themselves and usually their wives in the effort to cover up this car that has never seen rain I'm gonna trust my editor to post a picture here of the outdoor parking lot at the Corvette production facility long before your car was in anybody's hands I promise you it was sitting outside and not only did he get rained on it had snow on it too if it was made during the wintertime so don't worry so much about it you are not losing any value on your car if it happens to get rained on also the fact that you bought the car from a guy six months ago and he told you that the car has never been rained on does not necessarily make it sell so you may just want to hmm on the claim that you car has never seen rain now another one that we hear a lot of talk about especially with people who hang around the auction scene and what not is numbers-matching okay for clarification a numbers-matching car in general means that the identification number on the engine block and if applicable the identification number on the transmission match the VIN number of the car that's pretty much all it means now you can get into different casting numbers on blocks and dips and all that but as a simple shorthand version numbers matching means that this is the engine and the transmission that this car was born with at the factory here's the problem you see people selling numbers-matching engines and transmissions on eBay sitting there there's the engine and there's the transmission what the hell do they match if you don't have the car that that engine was born with it's not numbers-matching they may match each other they're not gonna match your car so you please understand numbers-matching is not nearly as important as the condition of the car itself when it comes to what a car is worth whether you want to own it or not whether it's worth showing or not numbers-matching has been way over inflated because of the auction and because of the NCR s kind of restoration bent that a lot of people have with this it is not all that important especially if you're dealing with a car that was made after 1980 it's just not that big a deal it doesn't hurt to have a numbers-matching car don't get me wrong it's a great thing but it isn't the end-all be-all and if you're going to claim your car as numbers-matching make sure you understand what that means so if somebody looks under your hood at a show in checks I don't have to say something out loud in front of other people okay another word that I hear often is rare this car is rare well okay so if they painted a no option no air no power steering automatic 1975 coupe baby puke brown with a bright red interior and they made one of those cars my word effect it is rare but it's also rare because nobody else wanted it that is the least desirable car possible so being rare doesn't necessarily mean good or desirable I see too many cars come up especially you know people god bless them they're selling their car Facebook marketplace or Craigslist and they're calling their 1984 automatic coupe rare but does it run is that that would make it rare I don't know it just doesn't it's not rare not rare beans two or three were made and as I said that may not necessarily mean it's desirable just that there weren't many of them so we got to get that straight another thing through the years you hear the same my dad my uncle my friend had a blah blah blah and that blah blah blah that they always say they had my dad uncle friend had one of the Corvettes when their bodies were still made of steel no no they were never ever ever made of steel so what we have learned to do in our professional capacity here at CNS Corvettes as Corvette enthusiasts is when somebody says that we go really that's interesting because you can't correct someone they won't listen but you know what this is a one-way conversation right now and I can correct it other things you hear I had a big-block split-window coupe you might have had a split window you might have had a big-block but it wasn't built that way cuz big blocks weren't available until 1965 and the split window was only made in 1963 oh no I had one okay that's interesting or the fuel-injected big-block that's another one guys there was never ever ever a fuel-injected big-block in 63 to 67 only the small-block had fuel injection as an option big blocks were always correlated oh no my uncle he had a fuel-injected big-block 63 split-window coupe with a steel body well isn't that interesting if you're going to be at a swap meet in particular and you're going through people's parts I've done video on this in the past do you know talking with the vendors in this when you talk about working on your own car that means there is most likely a wrench involved or a socket pliers working on your own car does not consist of changing your license plate frame swapping out your wiper blades putting air in your tires those are all necessary and good things for you to do and that's awesome but that does not really constitute working on your car so let's just champ that down and say I'd like to work on my car would you show me how and I'm gonna tell you this great page to go to and watch instructional videos I tell you how to do things like that and we can get you working on your car my final one and this doesn't only apply to Corvette any of you out there who are car people you've heard it the outrageous claims of top speed horsepower and quarter-mile times things that are physically impossible a Saturn 5 rocket couldn't do some of these things my personal favorite we had a customer who shall remain nameless who had a 1971 two convertible and he had hopped it up still at a small-block in it and he did uh some performance stuff he was in the military and he claimed that he was racing a Huey Cobra gunship across the desert and that the kyla copter couldn't keep up now top speed of a Huey Cobra gunship is somewhere around 200 miles an hour I promise you if you take a 63 2 7 or a 68 282 Corvette and you move it forward at that speed precisely one thing is going to happen it is going to take flight it will not stay on the ground they were not aerodynamically designed to go that speed so if you're gonna make outrageous claims at least try to keep them in the realm of believability because then they're it's an entertaining story instead of someone just giving you the because nobody wants to see that when they're telling a story food for thought I hope you've enjoyed this if there are other things that you've heard at swap meets or car meets that you think should be added to this list let me know because I'm probably gonna be doing a part two of this because this is all I could think of just in short order I look forward to hearing your comments as always anything you need feel free to give me a call [Music]