By Dean Larson

Photos: Seller, eBay

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that Craigslist has started charging $5.00 per posting in the “cars and trucks” category to private party sellers. It’s legit, we’ve checked. We’re not certain how severely this fee will effect our selection of secondhand shitboxes, but we’re bummed either way. Will almighty mother Craigslist continue as the lumbering giant of online classifieds, or will newcomers like Facebook Marketplace and mobile apps like Letgo begin to grab larger market shares? I guess only time will tell.

While we’ll always favor good-old-fashioned Craigslist classifieds, this beautiful Kellison J6 Panther body on Facebook Marketplace gives us hope. Once you get past the ridiculous wheels used for mock-up purposes, it looks like this is actually a fairly mint condition Kellison body in new-old condition.

With a 100 to 104-inch wheelbase, the J6 Panther was a bold fiberglass body made for the ’53 to ’62 Corvette chassis. It featured classic Kellison J-car looks, but was slightly more refined than earlier models. The J6 was essentially an updated version of the J4, with a revised nose that featured a larger angular grille, a trunk lid and a more pointed tail. Sources estimate that over 500 Panther coupes were built, making the car a solid seller for Kellison, but still an extremely rare car.

Built some five decades ago, we’d expect the Kellison body to be in rough condition after a life of sitting in a garage or barn. But the body looks to be in fantastic condition, and it’s quite clean as well. Devoid of glass, interior parts and latches, this body has obviously never been mounted up or finished in any way, but hopefully that day is soon to come.

You’ll have to source a Corvette chassis to complete the build, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. In fact, there’s a 1960 Chevrolet Corvette rolling chassis on eBay right now, which would be the perfect base for a period-correct street, or track car build. The options are wide open, as the J6 body looks great in most any configuration, and we’re especially fond of the J6 drag car known as Zorro’s Charger.

Unfortunately, the seller does not have an explicit price listed for the car currently, as they’re waiting on an appraisal. If you’re serious about the J6, it looks like it will take roughly $2,000 to get it, as the seller has provided screen shots of a J6 body that sold in 2017 for $1,989.

See the seller's ad here on Facebook Marketplace.