Man Buys a C6 Corvette at an Auction, Wants To Give It Back, but He Is Stuck With It

The 15-year old Corvette had a score of 4.7 out of 5. The score is given after an inspector checks the car from bumper to bumper. The only thing wrong he discovered was a worn-out set of tires on the sports car that had 40,000 miles (64,374 kilometers) on the clock. So, what could go wrong?

So, Sam couldn't have missed the opportunity for the world. Everywhere else, such cars are usually listed for almost $50,000. He ignored the red flag and went ahead and bought it.

But so many issues showed up even before he got to pick up the car that Sam, the new owner of the Corvette, can't believe he got scammed. He had bought such Corvettes before, and none was that bad. Not even the salt-water-flooded ZR1 caused him such a headache.

He knew what to expect and besides, he had bought it for cheap. Somehow, he has always pulled it off. But will it work this time as well?

What he is dealing with right now is a clean title C6 Corvette Z06 that he bought for the price of a base model. He could hardly wait to get his hands on the sports car powered by a 7.0-liter LS7 V8 (it wasn't the time for downsizing just yet!). Or at least it should.

It is an engine that pumps out 505 horsepower (512 metric horsepower) and 470 pound-feet (637 Newton meters) of torque for an acceleration from 0 to 60 mph in just 3.4 seconds. The needle of the speedometer goes all the way to a top speed of 199 mph (320 kph). But does it still?

On the day of the delivery, Sam got a text message from the dealership that sold it. Little did he know that it was the beginning of the end. The truck driver who was to deliver his Corvette reportedly had a truck with a dead battery on the trailer. The dealership representative claimed that he connected the Corvette to the truck by jumper cables for one hour, so that he could bring it back to life. "He might have damaged the clutch," the text message read.

Furthermore, the dealership informed him that the clutch was down to the floor, that they were not responsible for it, and that they had footage of the whole situation to prove it. Sam suspected a common hydraulic issue with the C6 Corvettes: a faulty master cylinder. However, he was unable to contact them and set a new delivery day and time for his Corvette.

He eventually called the auction arbitrator to ask for help, but Sam instantly noticed they were biased toward the seller and blamed him for the issue. The selling dealer did send footage to the arbitrator, but it was irrelevant. It just showed the Corvette driving through the dealership yard and the clutch to the floor.

Meanwhile, the transportation company said their driver did not even drive the Corvette because he could not drive a car with a manual transmission. The supposed driver of the truck shows up in the video walking through the parking lot while the car is driven by someone else. So, things were finally starting to add up.

Sam asked his friend O.J. for help. O.J. sent a flatbed to the dealership and had the car delivered in a few hours. He called Sam to tell him his new Corvette looked good, but it had probably been used on the track a lot.

The clutch seemed dead indeed, with zero hydraulic pressure. He noticed that the fluid in the clutch fluid reservoir was terribly dirty. He also found an aftermarket steel braided hose near the reservoir, which would be used to drain the clutch fluid. Then, why was it that dirty?

Sam got suspicious and asked O.J. for one more favor: to check if the car really came with the 7.0-liter LS7 V8. He sent Sam a text with a photo, writing that the intake manifold looked smaller than he remembered. When Sam checked the cylinder head number, his heart sank.

That was for the LS3, not for the LS7 that this C6 Corvette was supposed to have. The LS3 is a far cry from the LS7, so he obviously got scammed. The Corvette expert also found a frame damage repair.

Sam sent an email to the arbitration telling them about the car coming with the wrong engine and with all the issues the expert had found. He returned the Corvette, but they solved the case in favor of the seller, so the car went back to Sam. He was stuck with it.

Luckily, the 2009 Corvette came with a Deal Shield, a no-limits guarantee, which is usually offered to cars in good condition. The Deal Shield allows the buyer to return the car within 20 days from the purchase and get a full refund. So, Sam decided to use the service for the first time and eventually managed to get rid of it.

After he got his money back, searching for the car online, he found a prior sales ad of the 2009 Chevy Corvette listed on a used car website. However, the 4.7 score was nowhere to be found. It was rated at just 1.7 out of 5, which is definitely more appropriate than the 4.7 that tricked Sam into buying it.