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These old car seats are selling for $126,000

A set of worn-out car seats are up for sale in the United States for the steep sum of USD$90,000 (AUD$126,466) thanks to their title as "the first Corvette seats ever made".


The seats were originally installed in the 1952 EX-52 Project Opel, or 'Cougar' – one of the first iterations of the Chevrolet Corvette as we know it today.

The 'Cougar' was one of five pre-production Corvette prototypes to be built with tracking numbers between 852-856 – the Cougar was number 852.

It made its debut at the 1953 General Motors Motorama at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, where it was renamed "Corvette".

The distinctive red seats can even be glimpsed in the car in this original footage from the 1953 Chicago Auto Show:

According to the eBay listing, the car travelled around the US as part of GM's 'Parade of Progress', before heading to a Chevrolet plant in Michigan in June 1953 where it was revised with production parts and these seats were removed.

According to an article from Corvette Restorer, the EX-52 was one of three running prototypes for the Corvette – featuring a Chevrolet straight-six capable of producing 160hp or 119kW – but it was mostly used as a display car.

"These historical First Corvette Seats are the perfect conversational element for the finest Automobile Collector’s Man-cave (or She-shed)," the listing reads.

The seats are currently located in Indiana and the seller says a full ownership history can be made available to the buyer.

Susannah Guthrie

Susannah Guthrie has been a journalist for over a decade, covering everything from world news to fashion, entertainment, health and now cars. Having previously worked across titles like The New Daily, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, People Magazine and Cosmopolitan, Susannah now relishes testing family cars with the help of her husband and two-year-old son.

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