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.