Student-built 1980 Corvette L82 is an Inspiration to All
Proving that “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” this special Corvette is heading to auction straight from SEMA 2018.
SEMA 2018 may be in the rearview mirror now, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t have plenty to share with all of you.
Such is the case with this special 1980 Corvette L82 donated by the National Corvette Museum and built by the Warren County Tech Center Advanced Motorsports Academy with the Southcentral Kentucky Community & Technical College, both located in Bowling Green. This C3-era racer is going straight from SEMA to the Mecum Auctions event in Las Vegas November 15th through 17th, so we were lucky to spend some time with it before it hits the auction block.
The Corvette was built as part of a program for both secondary and post-secondary students interested in science, technology, engineering, art, and math (S.T.E.A.M., for short), with the aim of inspiring “a passion for the automotive career pathway” in the hearts of students from middle school through college.
The main goal for the Corvette, which was kept in a climate-controlled showroom before the program received it, was to build it into a competitive beast for the 2017 Holley LS Fest. Under the hood is a supercharged 6.0-liter LS2 using Holley’s HP EFI kit and a Paxton supercharger for big power.
Power is sent through a “fully race-prepped” TH350 automatic to a posi-trac rear axle packing 4.11 gears via a carbon fiber driveshaft, then reaches the asphalt through the rear pair of slotted wheels wrapped in Nitto NT01 DOT-compliant road course tires. The Corvette’s four-inch side exhaust is fully functional, the headlamps are fixed, and the whole thing wears a custom mix of PPG Gunmetal Gray and Daytona Blue.
