1978 Corvette Summer Movie Car Is All Kinds of Strange

As you probably guessed by now, the movie is called Corvette Summer, and it was released in 1978. Just after Mark Hamill got done playing Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, he picked the lead in this because he thought it was a cool, romantic story.

The plot has his character Kenny Dantley, a high school senior, building this custom Corvette as a class project. He dreams of taking it to Detroit and making it big, but before that happens, the 'Vette is stolen.

Kenny then hitchhikes to Las Vegas and gets picked up by Vanessa, who's played by Annie Potts. Now, I'm a big fan of Hamill, and only know Potts as Young Sheldon's Meemaw, but in this 1978 movie she plays... an escort-in-training.

It's safe to say the plot doesn't stand up to the test of time, but the Vette looks interesting. It started life as a 1973 model, so a C3. It had the L48 base 350 engine and the Turbo 350 transmission. No, that's not an actual turbo, the marketing people just called it that.

It had been rear-ended and ended up in the junkyard, where the producers found it. Handed over to Korky's Kustom Studios, it underwent a full transformation.

The fiberglass nose is very pointy, leading to a set of square Caprice-type fixed headlights. Meanwhile, the hood looks like those sawfish and has several little mesh screens on the sides. It's also slightly widened in the fender department, accommodating a set of Superior turbine wheels, which we've seen on a lot of other movie cars. Two pipes exit on each side and join together just behind the front wheel to form a rocker-mounted muffler.

Finding footage of this reclusive little toy was difficult. We've got a few shots from a replica sold by Barrett Jackson four years ago, as well as one by Gotham Garage.