1970 Chevrolet Corvette 454 Gets First Wash in Years, Becomes Stunning Survivor

It's the kind of classic I hate to see forgotten in a barn. It's simply too beautiful to sit and rot away for decades. Sadly, many C3 'Vettes are doing just that right now. And it's not just the post-1972 examples with the detuned V8 engines. Some C3s from the golden muscle car era have been forgotten or abandoned as well.

Fortunately, some get second chances and come back to life as fully restored classics and restomods. The yellow C3 you see here is one of the lucky ones. Left to sit under a tree back in 2006, it recently got its first wash and detailing in more than a decade. And now it's a stunning survivor ready to hit public roads again.

There's not a lot of info as to why this 1970 Corvette was retired 16 years ago, but all that exposure to the elements left a few scars on the yellow paint. Luckily, the detailing process also included the necessary touch-ups to cover the bare metal spots. And once polished, the paint came back to life, and nearly all evidence of this Corvette being parked outside for years vanished.

And you know what else is really cool about this C3? It rocks a 454-cubic-inch (7.4-liter) big block under the hood. The largest mill offered in the third-gen Corvette, the 454 debuted the same model year this car was built. This specific unit packs 390 horsepower and 500 pound-feet of torque.

While it wasn't as powerful as the 427-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) ZL1 that Chevy offered in 1969 (460 horsepower), the 454 was the most potent option in 1970. The engine soldiered on until 1974, but it was detuned to 270 horses after the 1971 model year.

The 1970 Corvette is also notably harder to find compared to its C3 sibling from different years. That's because it had a short model year with only 17,316 units built. For reference, the 1969 model year spawned 38,462 examples. I guess it's one more reason to celebrate this revival. Check it out in the video below.