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I'm not sure about the 305 in an '80 Corvette in California anyway. The small block 400 engine started to show up in the K10 4x4 pickups and I remember at least one El Camino from around '75 with that engine. That would have meant that the Chevelle would have had it also. The problems with the 400 had to do with cooling since the cylinders were so close together in the block that the area between the cylinders in the block could overheat and cause head gasket issues if you didn't look after the cooling system. Back then the hat thing was to get the 400 cranks and put in your 350, after a little notching of the block siderails. With a slight cleanup over bore you had a 383 cu in engine. Now you just order a new crank from Scat crank or one from some other supplier.

There was also a normal '63 kit with the factory fuel injection engine in it and all done in stock trim

Beautiful body and paint work. Clean body trim. Like the engine detailing.

Love your story and the gritty finish on the pickup.

I would look forward to seeing your touch on this kit.

Great looking paint color and finish. Looks a lot like the "Tiger Gold" of the era. Wouldn't be a GTO without a set of Redlines.

Great looking paint finish and color. The engine and interior look cleanly detailed.

Beautiful looking Nomad. Great looking body chrome and paint colors. Like the stance and the wheels.

The cost for GM and all the manufacturers at that time to smog a car for sale in California and a couple of eastern seaboard states was so great they limited the available engines for California. Your mention of the 2bbl. 350 for example. What Chevrolet did was to offer the base 250 in line 6 or the 350 4bbl engine in the Colonnades in California. The same for the Nova as well. One bright spot was the Monza models as they had either the 4 cyl and the V-8 option was the 350 where everyone else was getting the 267 cu in V-8. C-10 pickups used much the same engines as the Colonnades and the Novas. Impala & Caprices also used the 350 4 bbl. engine after 1974.

Great looking Pontiac. The interior you mentioned would represent the Venture trim option. Like the paint work and the optional wide whites and the 8-lug brake and wheel combination was unique to the Pontiacs.

I also became a fan of the Colonnade style two door body style. I remember some '73 model Malibu SS cars that were the last of the 454 4-speeds available in California. They wouldn't keep up with the '72 and earlier cars, but they wouldn't leave you embarrassed either. Detroit was scrambling to keep up with the smog regulations and especially the ones that were even stricter as California was at the time. Just a little history lesson from that era. In California, as in many other parts of the country, the largest polluter were the "smokestack" companies that insisted they couldn't afford to make their emissions cleaner, so the government went after the auto industry customers who would have a much smaller voice and presented that the automobile was the main cause of air pollution. In fairness there was auto caused pollution, but not on the scale that was presented to the general public and giving industry a free pass.

As everyone else has pointed out the paint finish and color look great. I like the clean finishes and body trim along with the engine details.

Beautiful paint finishes and color. The lighting in the photos make the model look very realistic.

All great looking builds and the verity of styles as well.

Beautiful looking body work and paint. Looks sort of like what used to be called the "Kamback" look.

Sorry to hear of your experience with the GM products of that era, but the issues were across the board with any of the U.S. products of the time as they all had to meet the new emission standards plus the way horsepower was determined changes to a net figure from a gross figure for horsepower ratings. I made a statement at the time, I was new to the car business and working in a Chevrolet dealership, my thought was if you could sell these new cars, you could sell anything.

Looks a lot like some of the cans on the local markets shelf. I have found products that are 60 to 90 days over their best by date often.

Seems popular around here to have streets, lanes, places, avenues and courts all with the same first name and all with in a stone through of each other.

Yugo. My Yugo story goes like this. I was working at a Chevrolet dealership when Yugo was looking for dealers to take them on as a second line for sales. The evening that they two Yugo guys came to the dealership and were putting their sales pitch to the dealer was sort of a cool and damp evening. The Yugo guys and the dealer and one of the other sales managers went for a drive to see what the thing was like. They returned in about 5 minutes since they couldn't get the defroster to clear the windshield on the inside and the dealer said, "he could run faster than that thing would go".

Your great story explains the accurate looking patina finish on this. The bed and boom look very realistic. The cracked windshield is a nice touch.

Like the sinister look of the matt black paint, blacked out chrome trim and the stance. Reminds me of a car I saw at a show this last summer.

Beautiful paint finish and the color is one of my favorites on this model of car. Clean looking engine and realistic interior finishes.

Still a great looking paint finish even after all this time. Like the engine detailing.

Great looking paint work and like the signage.

Beautify done body and paint. Your build looks just like the car in the pictures. A vehicle with this long on a wheelbase would be hard to drive around corners on narrow streets since you would start turning in the middle of the block.