Autoweek Asks: What would you do with a Chevy Corvair Monza with 17 miles on the clock?

A few weeks ago we asked our readers what they would do with a 1978 Chevrolet Corvette with just 4 miles on the clock. The car had been part of the now-legendary Lambrecht Chevrolet auction back in 2013, and was purchased for $80,000 — quite a bit above the going rate for a very late C3 with a few mechanical needs, and an interior that had deteriorated a bit due to the storage conditions.

That particular Corvette had the misfortune of being from an underpowered year with 185 hp on tap, and was clearly not the apotheosis of the C3 production run, hailing from a Malaise-flavored time when it had been on the shelf a little too long. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t find a buyer back in 1978. But it did have something else going for it: it was the Indy 500 Pace Car Edition, which is at least a little bit more collectible than your average C3, especially if you accept the premise that some C3 appearance packages are indeed collectible. For $80,000 the buyer received a dusty but complete C3 that will lose value with every mile it gains, so it’s effectively a car 70 percent of whose value rests in the 4 miles it has on the odometer and the plastic that it has on the seats. Because a C3 you can drive with abandon is just a click away on eBay.

This time we have something a little different, but from the same magical field: it’s a 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza with 17 miles on the odometer, and it hammered for $42,000, grabbing the ninth highest sale price of the entire 500-car auction.

We had an opportunity to look inside the Corvair, finding it exceptionally dusty inside and out but undamaged on the outside, and still carrying its MSO paperwork. Aside from the wheel covers nothing obvious appeared to be missing, as the car had spent its years indoors. Very dusty indoors, but indoors nonetheless.

This Corvair Monza presents a slightly different equation to collectors and classic car owners. Unlike the C3 Corvette it’s older, it doesn’t hail from the Malaise-soaked years, and it was not exorbitantly expensive for a Corvair Monza with an interesting story. Still, the winning bidder paid about two to three times the going rate for a very nice Corvair Monza from that year. That said, the Corvair’s entire value doesn’t depend on the fact that it has 17 miles on the clock, placing it on the fence when it comes to drivability versus preservation as-is, dust included.

Would you feel free to drive this Corvair Monza after a thorough mechanical checkup and a good wash, some new tires and other needs, or would you preserve it as-is, complete with half a century of Nebraska field dust inside and out?

Let us know in the comments below.

The Corvair Monza had its original build sheet still in the window.

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