'81 Article in Corvette Magazine

[Tom Bryant]

The L81 gets the cover and lead story in the June issue of Corvette Magazine. It's actually a story on the early '80s Corvettes but they use a '81 for the pictures and feature. One very interesting comment that runs contrary to all that we currently believe to be fact is this quote: "Bowling Green produced most (though not all, as many believe) two-tone '81s."

So I think that puts the ball in our court to see if we can possibly document any St. Louis two-tone or come up with any other proof that there was such an animal. If there was they must have been laquer.

Interesting. I may have to write a letter to the magazine and ask them to disclose their source of information on this.

Tom

 

[gedmeyer]

Tom, I just did a quick check and our registry lists 91 L81's with Bowling Greeen Build numbers (compared to 8 from St Louis) having the D84 Two-Tone paint option.

With over 600 L81's registered, I believe this is a fair sampling and right inline with the magazine's assesment.

-tim

D84 Two-Tone Paint Option

 

[Grizzly]

There Goes more bargains!

I always thought that that last series was the C3 that looked "finished." The '68 should have looked like that.

Now if they would have just made a convertible!

 

[Yoda]

The Registry has fully documented a few St. Louis 2-tone paint jobs. The first one to come in via our registration, I :eek asked the owner to validate their S/N & Trim Tag, then I did a little more library work and in one of my reference books it states "a test run of 2-tone paint schemes were done at the St. Louis Plant prior to the opening of the Bowling Green plant. Approximately 12 to 20 cars were released from St. Louis during production sporting the 2-tone paint scheme." It goes on to say with the use of the new Base Coat/Clear the process would not be a major disruption to the manufacturing process.

Bud

 

[Tom Bryant]

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I never looked into it that deeply and just went with the common belief that all two-tones were BG cars. I would like to see one with original paint to see if they did a better job than they did on the rest of our St. Louis cars.

Tom

 

[craig32]

Don't forget that the '78 Pace Cars and Silver Anniversary Specials were all two-toned paint. They would also have been St. Louis laquer. They made other two-tones before '81 too, so they would have been the same.
Craig