Do Corvairs have any resale value?

Corvairs are certainly collectible to those who cherish them. They aren't as popular as Chevelles or Corvettes (for obvious reasons) but there are people out there who desire these cars. It won't be as easy to find a buyer but they are out there.

I find one flaw in your thinking. It will take way more than $1300 to put this car is "show" condition. A new paint job alone will cost twice that. And if you are trying to sell it on the collector's market it has to look showroom new.

the amount of money you invest in any vintage car is in direct proportion to how much you'll get back when you sell it.

You might want to seriously check your estimate on what it will take to make an $800 Corvair into "show condition". It's going to take a lot more than $1300 to make it a "show car". I speak from experience - restoring older cars is an EXPENSIVE hobby. It will probably take more than $1300 just to make it somewhat of a "driver". Making it a "show car" is going to cost you a lot more. Things break unexpectedly in older cars compared to modern cars and it's hard to know exactly what's going to break in a car that's now 44 model years old....you need to budget for stuff like that too.

As far as resale value goes, they're "classics" so if you fix one up you should be able to get decent resale value for it - much better than if you bought a rusty old 1993 Toyota Corrolla with 220,000 miles on it for the same $800 anyway. Keep in mind that you're also going to have to put quite a bit of money and time into it to get that resale value back out later - otherwise it will only be worth about the $800 you're buying it for right now if you don't fix it up.

If you like fixing up cars and enjoy driving something different from everyone else, I'd go for it though - there's nothing better than driving around in an older car that looks new if you ask me. Just be prepared to spend more than you think and then spend some more....

Those models are collectible, but not extremely popular. You should be okay with your estimates. They were a fun car, I had a 1965 conv., fast little car.