Buy low, sell high. It’s a simple concept that works as well for the classic car market as it does for the stock market.
And though Bob Guarrera of Laguna Niguel doesn’t plan to sell his prized 1958 Chevrolet Corvette convertible anytime soon, he definitely bought low. How low? Try $650.
“Best investment I ever made,” he says of his 1970 purchase. And it happened only because his 1964 Mercury Comet Cyclone was stolen.
Guarrera, 72, who moved to Southern California from his native New Jersey in 1969, was living in Manhattan Beach at the time.
“One Monday morning I was getting up to go to work to drive to downtown L.A. and I walked over to where my car was parked and it wasn’t parked there anymore,” he recalls.
Guarrera reported the theft – the Cyclone was never recovered – and found the Corvette that same day.
“I immediately started looking in the newspaper and saw this ad for a 1958 Corvette and it said $650,” Guarrera says. “My roommate and I were talking about it and he said, ‘Well, it probably doesn’t run. Or if it runs, it’s probably all bashed in.’”
Nevertheless, Guarrera called on the ad and found that the car was being sold by a young woman, a recent USC graduate.
“She lived right across from USC on Figueroa Street and had the car parked right there on the front lawn and it looked great,” he says.
The car had 28,000 miles on it and was in good condition, apart from some tears in the upholstery. It had the standard 230-horse, 283 V-8 with 3-speed manual transmission and ran well, but was being sold because it wasn’t practical enough for its owner.
“She had just graduated with an art degree and was going to be teaching art,” Guarrera says. “She had to carry around her easels and all this stuff and she said there’s just not enough room (in the Corvette). So, I gave her the money and I drove home. And I’ve had the car ever since.”
Guarrera wasn’t unfamiliar with Corvettes. His roommate owned a ’60 purchased for $1,200 about six months earlier, and a high school classmate owned an older model.
“He used to drive it to school and everybody went nuts over it,” Guarrera says. “It was white with red interior and I thought, ‘Gee, what a great car that would be.’ But it was never practical, especially back East with winter. It’s really not the kind of car you can drive there every day like you can out here.”
Guarrera, who at the time worked for Coast Federal Savings and Loan, used his ’58 as a daily driver until 1972, commuting to downtown Los Angeles from Manhattan Beach and later from Glendale. He then bought a Ford LTD, which made more sense for driving clients around, but never considered selling the Corvette, which he says looks nearly the same today as it did when he bought it.
It was repainted in 1985 in its original Snowcrest White color by Corvette Mike’s in Anaheim. More recently, the interior was redone in red, a change from its factory color.
“About nine years ago I decided to redo the interior and instead of doing it in black I did it in the red that was right for that year,” Guarrera says, pointing out that GM didn’t note interior colors in the VIN until the early 1960s. That allows the value of the car to be maintained.
“So if you have a GM car before ’61 and you want to change the interior or exterior, as long as you do it to a color and interior that was offered that year, it’s fine,” he says. “The car was always white and I kept it white but I always liked the red interior.”
Interestingly, when the Corvette debuted in 1953, the only color combination offered was white with a red interior. Color choices weren’t available until 1954 and even then there were only four exterior and two interior colors offered.
The only powertrain initially was a 6-cylinder engine with 150 horsepower (155 in ’54) paired with a 2-speed automatic transmission. The Corvette gained a V-8 in 1955 – the new 265-cubic-inch Chevy small block.
By 1958, the Corvette had become a serious performance car, with up to 290 horsepower from a fuel-injected 283-cubic-inch V-8 and a choice of two manual transmissions as well as the automatic. Sales numbers were the best yet, but it was still a low-volume car, with 9,168 built.
Sales of Ford’s 2-seat 1955-57 Thunderbird, in contrast, never dropped below 15,000 units a year. The low production figures only add to early-Corvette collectability today, of course.
In addition to redoing the car’s paint and interior, Guarrera had its engine rebuilt 18 years ago and replaced its worn 3-speed manual transmission with a 4-speed unit. Guarrera admits he’s not mechanical, but relies on a wrench-turning friend and Steve LuVisi at Automotive Expertise Unlimited Inc. in Huntington Beach to keep the Corvette on the road, where it never fails to draw a positive reaction – along with offers from would-be buyers.
“If I leave the car anywhere I’ll come back and there’s cards in there saying, ‘I’ll pay cash,’” he says. “It’s just amazing. I hear all kinds of stories every place I go. It’s fun.”
Guarrera says the car drives well, though not like a newer Corvette.
“It’s pretty smooth,” he notes. “I don’t have power steering, power brakes and things like that. It doesn’t have air conditioning, but you know, I think it rides great. If it’s a nice day I might drive down the coast to San Clemente or up the coast to Newport or Huntington Beach.”
He also takes the car to local shows.
As for the future, Guarrera, a real estate agent who owns Laguna Niguel Realty and Mortgage Services, has talked about eventually giving the car to his son if he wants it. But he’s in no rush to part with it.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do but I intend to hold it for as long as I can,” he says. “I’d just hate to get rid of it. Forty-five years is a long time.”
