Margaret and I and two of her children visited New York City in May. We stayed at a hotel on 57th St., just south of Central Park, our home base as we did all the touristy stuff, including walking through the park, taking a cruise down the Hudson River, and going to the site of the World Trade Center. That last one, frankly, in retrospect, I could have lived without. Anyway, in all of Manhattan this was the only curbside classic I encountered, on 56th St. right behind our hotel. I peg this arrest-me red Corvette to about 1979.
We didn’t linger long; we had things to see. But I did get off a couple shots – and noticed that this otherwise cherry car had characteristic parking scrapes on the bumper. I’ve zoomed in on them in the shot below.
Twenty five years ago I drove out east to visit a friend in Hoboken. She explained to me how to park. “If you’re lucky to find a spot on the street, if you can fit in it at all, it will be just barely. You back in until you hit the car behind you, and then move forward until you hit the car in front of you, and repeat until you’re parked. We all have scrapes on our bumpers from it.”
Clearly, this car has seen that kind of parking, too.
Not rusty enough to be a true new yorker
Fiberglass body; not gonna rust!
Maybe that’s his point; that un-rusty plastic cars can never be genuine New Yorkers? 🙂
I’m always a bit amazed at what can be found at the curb in NYC and other crowded big cities. One just has to be willing to put up with a bit of inevitable dinging; or worse.
I’m with you Paul. Why, just why would anybody drive anything but a $500 beater in these big cities? I don’t even like driving in downtown Portland. Between the Max trains, Tri Met buses, and clowns on bicycles who think they own the roads here, no thanks. Garibaldi is more my style. 🙂
+1
Something lake a late 80’s Tempo that has a black rub strip around all four sides would be the ticket.
You should see my 2014 model small SUV after 2 years in $hitcago. Now, I had my eyes on a “nice” car before purchasing this one but I knew what I was up for. Among its many dings, dents and scuffs, the attached picture is a tire mark from a pedicycle that found it necessary to squeeze (yes, squeeze) between me and a cab at a red light. Well, the cab turned right on red and we discovered he hooked his rear bike tire in my wheel well and not did that as swipe take a tumble into the street. Fortunately, he had no passengers.
The second pic is the chick that hit me while I was parked in a McDonalds parking lot, very last spot right up against the curb (I’m certain she was texting while pulling into that LARGE open space for a city lot).
And the 3rd pic is the hoodrat’s car that, while stuck in traffic next to the NFL draft pick, couldn’t wait 30 more seconds for the cars to pull up 3 inches so he could get in the left turn lane and decided to drag his right side mirror down the side of my car from the tail light (cracked) all the way to the front door (no, it won’t buff out).
This is just an example. Want to see the rest of the car? There’s also an Audi SUV emblem imprint embedded in my rear from the chick that couldn’t wait for a pedestrian to cross, hit me from behind slamming my head into the headrest causing a plugged ear for 3 days and simply…….took off. I have more, much more!
(she had the widest parking space I’ve ever seen in the entire city)
This one ran his right side mirror practically down the entire side of my car cracking the tail light and…..took off.
And this is a $1,350,000 (yes, million) “gut re-hab” single family home for sale in a “good” Chicago North side neighborhood.
A true “Curbside Classic”.
There I go, being all literal again!
When we were in Philadelphia a couple of years ago we were very impressed with the additional bumper pads that some cars were sporting.
Haven’t seen them anywhere else but it seemed to be a case of preventing your car from looking bad later by making it look bad now.
Maybe that Vette should have had those.
I’ve seen some cars in/near downtown Richmond with a contraption called the “bumper bully”. It attaches inside your trunk and once you’re parked (or before if you’re going to park in a full contact fashion) you open the trunk , pull out the pad, and it dangles from its attachment inside the trunk and protects your bumper. Looks a bit silly when parked but at least it’s tucked away while you’re out and about.
Of course, that wouldn’t do a ‘Vette a bit of good. It also only exists for rear bumpers as there’s no way to store it underhood for front use.
Bumper bullies are everywhere in Manhattan and on LI, too. I’ve always joked that mine comes pre-installed on my old, 5 mph bumper cars.
It is kind of strange, the way new cars are designed now.
I’ve seen a fair number of cars using big rubber “BumpShox” license plate frames in front to give them some protection, and quite a few cars that have aftermarket bumper guards and bumper rub strips attached to the rear bumpers and to the corners of front bumpers.
I should have gone into auto body repair.
Ha! I’ve been in the auto body biz for 35 years. It was fun back in the day. Not anymore.
There’s also a good amount of “rubbing” in NYC traffic that you don’t see in less-crowded places.
That’s a term I’ve not heard before. What’s ‘rubbing’?
“Rubbing is Racing”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eEPwDIGWYug
Safe for work but you should probably turn your sound way down
Thanks for the info. And the link. 😀
Having lived in NYC, I’ve been surprised to stumble across some remarkable Curbside Classics, like a mint Vega, a Bricklin and a stunning, concours condition Colonnade Monte Carlo. Trust me, people risk it and own cool cars there.
The bumper car parking comments of heavily populated metropolitan areas make sense of the importation of extremely short ‘Kei’ Japanese cars or, more accurately, the smart car. I’m not sure that owning ‘any’ car while living in the downtown area of one of these places is such a wise move, particularly if decent public transportation were available. But if one really wants to pay for that kind of independence, well, something like a smart would be the choice for a new car.
But, yeah, most would probably just suffer the dings and dents of driving an old beater.
I’d thought I’d read somewhere that the best vehicle for NYC is a Jeep with no radio.
I’ve seen this kind of bumper rash plenty of times on C3 Corvettes even here in the Midwest . You have to consciously remember there is 3 feet of car out there beyond the wheel humps you can’t see from the drivers seat .
I’m not particularly a fan of late-70s Corvettes or of New York City, but I keep being drawn back to that lead photo. Something about the vividly red car against the dull urban background is really striking, like the Corvette is a visitor from another time and place.
It’s like a breath of fresh air, which is probably how it appeared in person, too.
You’ve got to wonder if external bumpers will ever come back, they acted as such superior sacrificial barriers than the painted plastic these Vettes(among other GMs) so despicably pioneered way back then.
I wouldn’t hold your breath. We are living in an age where auto-correct tells you that the word you just typed is not the word that you want, and then gives you the word that it wants, even though you don’t want it. We need to stop calling them bumpers, as they they are now disposable end caps. The inmates are running the asylum.
Actually XR7Matt while what you are saying sounds logical, it was tried for several years and found not to be cost advantageous
“Yes. NHTSA conducted an evaluation of the bumper standard in 1981. The evaluation determined the net benefits (the change in costs) to the consumer attributable to each successive standard (applicable through MY 1980) in relation to unregulated bumper systems in MY 1972 and prior years. The evaluation findings were that bumper systems complying with the standard requirements for model years 1979 and 1980 (most, if not all, bumpers were built to the 1980 “no damage” standard in 1979) tended to show net consumer losses – based on a 10-year car life – when compared to unregulated bumper systems. The costs of the 1979/1980 systems were between $150 and $200 higher than the unregulated bumpers (1972 and earlier model years).”*
http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/problems/studies/Bumper/
Note: $200 in 1980 is roughly $585 in2016
I suspect a re-evaluation in 2016 would find in favour of proper bumpers. Sure some of today’s car look beautiful, but a low-speed frontal crash in, say, a new Mazda 6?
Problem with that evaluation is it presumably only takes into account documented repaired damage, effectively excluding the cars in dense urban areas where rubbing is so common place that any effort to correct minor damage like corner scratches is an act of futility for most residents. In a lot of cases the newly painted bumper covers will be a shade or two off as well.
A major justification of 73&74 regulations as I understand it was the bumpers were specified to protect exterior lights from being damaged in minor impacts, which owners were obligated by law to fix if damaged in a minor fender bender, who then would go through insurance to make it good as new. The 5mph bumpers solved that, despite costing the same or more to repair if the bumper assembly/mechanism itself is damaged, but if it wasn’t obvious why fix it? Modern plastic bumpers are still fairly effective at protecting lighting components, so city dwellers still are inclined to leave it as is, but they don’t do jack at actually protecting the corners of the car from purely aesthetic blemishes, which, prior to 1973, was essentially the sole purpose of having interchangable steel bumpers with a hard chrome finish in the first place – they could be damaged, but it wasn’t as obvious, and they didn’t require a repaint for repair.
Even in the 80s after the 5mph bumper laws were rolled back perimeter rub strips became very commonplace, which were often molded black urethane on the sides and protrusions molded into the bumper covers, painted black to match, allowing for easy touch up by shops or even DIY.
I remember my mother parallel parking our ’73 Chevy Malibu in front of the church one Sunday. I was so embarrassed with her banging those front and rear bumpers back/forth afraid my friends would recognize me and she blurts out “That’s what bumpers are for!”.
Then again, I also remember my babysitters daughter flying from the backseat to the front with us in her ’68 Dodge Polara when she rear ended someone (a bi-weekly occurrence), then slapping her and asking her “What the H are you doing back there? I told you to hang on!”.
In my short career as a CPA (Car Parking Attendant) we called that parking by sonar.
By the time this Corvette was built, I was so thoroughly sick of this style that I didn’t care if I never saw another. Today, I would happily own one of these.
Agreed that the sighting in NYC makes it doubly cool.
Cool old Vette. Growing up the following generation were all the rage, but like you, JPC, I like these now.
I haven’t had too much trouble with street parking here and there are a suprisingly large number of people who will leave a classic, sometimes a very very nice one, parked on the street.
I used to park the ’77 Buick outside my apartment here on the East Side. Reason? There was a solid bike lane between the parking lane and the curb. And it was kind of a beater despite the fresh coat of green paint, so people didn’t mess with it, parking (or the big bumpers just didn’t show it). The only damage I ever encountered was from taxis (you could always tell because the ding had yellow paint in it). What would happen is the taxi would pull over into the bike lane for the customer to alight, and that person would carelessly hurl the cab’s rear door open and clip my car. Usually the rear quarter panel.
I never had too much trouble parking the Buick in the city. The Olds is a little harder on the rare occasions that I park it on the street. But at 19.5 feet I cut it a little slack. The trick is to back park it. The power steering is so seamless on those old cars, and the visibility over the inevitable tail fins/fender humps so excellent for gauging distance that it is pretty easy to parallel park. I always get a chuckle watching some elderly Sutton place matron in her 535i struggling to park the little Bimmer in a space that is half as big. Just no rearward visibility on cars now.
I know the 50s well…the Vette is pretty close to one of my favorite old-school Italian spots, Il Tinello. The kind where they come around with a dessert cart.
Great point about rearward visibility. I’m teaching my youngest son to drive and the saving grace for our parallel parking sessions is that I drive a hatchback Ford Focus. The back window is pretty much the back of the car.
Had a friend who bought one of these (a ’78 or ’79) new after an ugly divorce. Was this strange, light bluish color (Frost Blue?) Very cramped cabin, not particularly fast and fit and finish was horrible. The footwells filled with water after the first rainstorm. Electrical problems galore. However, he said he never regretted buying it. Kept it a few years before trading it in on a new Grand Prix.
I had a ’79 in that color. Was called Corvette Light Blue. Mine leaked in the footwells too, until I sprayed a can of that rubberized undercoating into the well in front of the windshield.
This looks to be a ’79 but ’79’s had black trim around the rear window – this is chrome as in ’78. On the other hand, when the black trim on mine started to wear off, guess what was under it? Chrome.
Well, those (former) parking rules have been amended in certain regions. In Chicago, now, even if there’s a full car length of space behind you – while jabbing on your cell phone – you STILL RAM into the car you’re parking in front of.
Good catch indeed though the sides of the car look too perfect and the license plate is from around early 2007. I like the looks of this car and the aftermarket antenna is neat. When I was in Staten Island back in 2008 there was a surprising number of 20 year old or older land yachts chilling about.
What a beautiful shade of red. Makes that ?UV behind it look really bland!
C3 has always been my favorite Corvette, clean lines and innovative. This is my update version of C3: The windscreen would be bigger with more incline, rear end a bit elevated to improve down force, and slightly shorter overall.
The only Corvette I’d feel comfortable driving in New York City would have a bit nore –ahem — patina, like this refugee from the “Mad Max” franchise: