Junkyard Gem: 1994 Chevrolet Corvette Coupe

The Chevrolet Corvette is not the kind of vehicle that shows up frequently in ordinary car graveyards; when one wrecks or gets used up beyond restoration, it tends to end up in a specialty yard instead of your typical Ewe Pullet-type operation. Two or three decades back, I’d find the occasional C3 Corvette during my junkyard travels (and I still do, but only nearly unrecognizable shells that I don’t bother to document), but the early C4 is the most likely discarded Corvette to appear in your neighborhood boneyard these days. Here’s an unusual-for-the-junkyard late C4, found recently in a self-service yard in Reno, Nevada.

The C4 was available as a convertible from the 1986 model year all the way through 1996. This car is the more common coupe with bolt-on targa roof (which appears to be missing, perhaps bought by the first junkyard shopper who saw it).

I couldn’t get the hood open, but what I presume is the original 300-horsepower 5.7-liter V8 is still in the engine compartment.

1994 Corvette buyers could choose between a six-speed manual and a four-speed automatic for the same price. It appears that 17,318 of these cars were sold with automatics, while just 6,012 had manuals. This one has the automatic.

Corvette proud!

It appears to have had a couple of aftermarket components, or at least the stickers.

The MSRP for the 1994 Corvette coupe was $36,185, while the convertible cost $42,960 (that’s about $73,760 and $87,570 in 2022 dollars). If you wanted the ZR1 package and its fearsome 405-horse DOHC engine, your Chevy dealer tacked on an additional $31,258, which meant the ZR1 coupe cost the 2022 equivalent of $137,475. That still made the ZR1 cheaper than the new Porsche 928 GTS that year ($82,260 or $167,675 today).

Reno is fairly remote from major population centers, but we can assume that this car will be picked clean within a month or two.

C4 sales stayed in the low 20,000s per year throughout the 1990s. The introduction of the C5 Corvette for the 1997 model year gave GM an additional 10,000 or so Corvette sales per year.

Yes, you could buy a Corvette-branded vacuum cleaner in 1994.