$45K in 1983, that might as well have been $450K! that was a lot of money in the day, half the price of the average house, and you could have picked a dozen nice Z-28's for that money back then.
Yep, $45,000 seems pretty accessible by today's standards (not that I have a spare $45K sitting around in my bank account).
$45K in 1983 is around $135K in today's money. So, it was a lot of money. I don't know a single person who is in a position to spend $135K on a classic car today (maybe I have the wrong circle of friends and family). There are a lot of those folks out there, but it's still a fairly exclusive group -- those that can drop $135K on classic car. So, it would have been similar in 1983 -- not a lot of people with that kind of cash to drop on a classic car.
And, for my money, I'd never buy a car that I couldn't/wouldn't drive (not that I have to make that decision on my own). Cool car. Nice museum piece. Not my kind of thing, though.