WSIB: Corvette v Porsche (Part-1)

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix petrolheads are back for another rousing what should I buy debate. Using unique shopping criteria, they are challenged to find our first time collector the best vehicle that will make their friends go, Where’d you get that? or What the hell is wrong with you? at the next Cars and Coffee.

Crew Chief Eric: There are so many automotive rivalries, Ford versus Ferrari, Honda versus Volkswagen, Chevy versus Ford, and the list goes on and on. But there is an extra special one in the sports car and motorsports world, and that’s Porsche. Versus Corvette, both of which recently celebrated their respective 75th and 70th birthdays.

And after all this time, is it possible to agree on whether or not the 911 or the Corvette is THE everyman sports car?

Don Weberg: And we’re here to answer that very question with our petrolhead panel to settle yet another what should I buy debate. For the first time, as part of this series, our panelists will be focused on a [00:01:00] specific set of vehicles.

In one of our two part Porsche vs. Corvette debate, we’re joined by Mark Schenk, our 90s expert, along with Corvette owners like William Big Money Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace, Rob Parr from Collector Car Guide, and Rick Hoback from Auto Interest and Hoback Racing. And then there’s me! expert by way of my work with Mecham Auctions, who sells more Corvettes than anyone else on the planet, and I get to write about them.

Who am I? I’m Don Wieberg from Garage Style Magazine.

Crew Chief Eric: Thanks, Don. And like all What Should I Buy episodes, we have some shopping criteria. So get ready, folks. It’s time to unbutton your Hawaiian shirt, shine up your gold chains, and put on a fresh pair of New Balance sneakers, because we’re going to talk about Corvettes.

In our panel of Extraordinary petrol heads are challenged to find our first time collector something that will make their friends go Oh, that’s so you at the next cars and coffee. So welcome back to the show guys. Thanks. Hello. Hello. Hello You guys know how this works [00:02:00] listeners if this is your first what should I buy?

You know We sit and argue for the next hour and a half about what car we should buy for our fictitious first time collector But I want to kick this off by asking, does anybody know about the history of Corvette? Sort of like where it all got started? I’m gonna give you a hit. My t shirt is a big clue.

Don Weberg: Definitely Road America. In the words of Ferris Bueller, anyone, anyone?

Crew Chief Eric: So I got to give a quick nod to our friends at the International Motor Racing Research Center. If you go back into their history books, and we’ve done some episodes on this on break, fix the. Conception point of the C1 started with Harley J Earl.

It’s designer, but it stems from the early Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, when they used to race on the streets of Watkins Glen, he came to Watkins Glen to see the Grand Prix for the first time in a LeSabre and he said, it would be cool to compete in this car, but it’s too big. It’s too heavy. It’s not fast roadsters and some of the other boutique manufacturers out there.

Harley J Earl was inspired. Day one, the [00:03:00] Corvette was designed to compete against all these other cars. So what we’re going to look at over the course of this episode is how does it stack up over the years and where should people focus their attention and their money, much like the nine 11, there are eight generations of Corvette to talk about over 70 years of production.

What do we know about the C1? Is it worth collecting or is it too much hype, too expensive? Are there better options out there? If

William Ross: you’re a vertically challenged person, you can fit in it. They’re tight. That steering wheel is huge. Yeah. You got any kind of beer

Rob Parr: belly, forget about it. Or if you have big legs, forget it too.

Yeah. I can’t even get my legs on the steering wheel.

Crew Chief Eric: It started with a six cylinder, right? And then became a V8.

Rob Parr: 53 had a toll boat, six, then since 54. And was that the infamous blue flame six or something like that? Yeah. It’s the blue flame six. They call it, yes. Two carburetors. And the first year they only made about 200 of them.

1955, they adopted the two 65 V8. First year,

Crew Chief Eric: but not high performance by any stretch of the imagination. So sort of a dud when the C1 [00:04:00] first came out. So it took them, let’s say 10 years to almost get it right. And all is

Don Weberg: well. And the funny thing is when you get right into it, you end up with everybody immediately hit that thing against the Jaguar and the Aston Martin here.

You’ve got three cards with six cylinder engines, side draft carburetors, lightweight body, two seats. And yeah, I mean, they were born to compete with each other. But when you got into the original Corvette 53, 54, they would move. Oh, Hey, compared to other cars at their time, but you’re just zero to 60.

You’re still looking at something like 11 or 12 seconds, which in that day, really not too bad. When you consider the Chevy Bel Air or any of those basic sedans, you’re looking upwards of 18 seconds for zero to 60. Then you take the light weight into it. And really when you get right down to it. That first generation Corvette was actually pretty heavy for having a fiberglass body.

If I remember correctly, they still came in over 3000 pounds. It really wasn’t that light at all. It was almost equivalent to the Jaguar. And another problem that Corvette always [00:05:00] faced was when it came out, it was actually more expensive than the Jaguar. Then the Jag XK, how do you justify that when it was not as quick, not as fast, didn’t drive as well, didn’t have the panache, didn’t have a lot of stuff the XK did, and yet it costs more money.

So there’s a reason they only sold 300 that first time out. Not to mention, remember when they showed that car, they didn’t know if the public was going to embrace it. And the public loved it so much so that Chevrolet, General Motors, everybody rushed this thing into production, get it going, get it going, get it going.

So they did on a makeshift, not even assembly line, but more like a big barn where they built these cars largely by hand just to get them out. There was no marketing. They had no racing history. They didn’t go racing. I mean, it was really kind of a keystone cop. Operation when they first started. It was pretty funny when you start looking at their real history of the actual production Corvette.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, what I think is interesting about the C1 is it started as a convertible. It’s really interesting that later they’re like, Hey, let’s put a roof on this thing, because obviously we want to go racing, but then the intent was to go racing [00:06:00] from day one, so I’m like, yeah, I guess I get it, but even the C1 morphed over the years, because if you look at the later part of 1960, 61, 62, towards the tail end of the C1, Things like the Camerati Corvette that went to Le Mans and actually placed in the top 10.

And, you know, we’ll talk about that on a whole nother episode. Didn’t it get bigger though?

Don Weberg: Yeah. When you look at 53, 4, and 5 for the same reasons, they kind of fell on their face originally, which Zora Arkus Doontov wanted to correct immediately. But believe it or not, your designer that you mentioned, as well as Chevrolet itself, Did not, they did not want to correct the six cylinder immediately.

They did not want to correct the, I don’t have a crank window. They did not want to correct. I don’t have an outdoor side door handle, all these preacher comforts. They didn’t want to correct those things. They wanted a true diehard died in the world sports car that you can race on Sunday all day long against Jags and Ashton Martins and MGs and whatever.

Sales were just lagging American buyers. If they wanted that, guess what kids, they’d go buy a Jag. What? You’re going to tell me [00:07:00] Jag sold well? They outsold Corvette every single day of the week. So they fell on their face. It really wasn’t until Ford said, well, hell, we need something like that. And they brought about the Thunderbird.

Asked Ford officially? No, we never wanted to compete with the Corvette. We never wanted to do that. What they wanted was a personal luxury convertible car, but it had the crank windows, it had the exterior door handles. The vet had a radio too, but so too did the Thunderbird. The Thunderbird was useful. The Thunderbird was one of those cars that, yeah, it was sporty.

It could move okay, but you could drive it every day comfortably. You could take your mom to church in it on Sunday and you wouldn’t be embarrassed by it. Corvette was a different animal. Obviously. 1955, Chevrolet dropped in the V8. Now, why’d they do that? Did they know Thunderbird was coming out? Probably, but that was their first step.

But also Chevrolet didn’t have a V8 until 1955. They had that working against them. But remember 1956, whoa, baby, the Corvette was a whole different ball game. Yes. You had a lot of chrome. You had a lot of glitz. This thing screamed, I’m as American as Superman. [00:08:00] And that’s it. You had your VA, you had your crank windows, you had your exterior door handles, you had two Tom Pings jobs.

And what did we have? We had almost 8, 000 sold. Fantastic. The following year, you had a little bit more. And remember in 1958, huge recession year, but Corvette grew. That was really positive. You can definitely thank Thunderbird for that. Because that came along and Chevy, everybody got on board with more stuff for the Corvette.

Rob Parr: Don’s talk. I think the Corvette would have died if he wasn’t behind it. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. And the racing side, the Pikes Peak 1957 was a big year for that car. It won, it got a lot of, some racing involved in and really got inspiration.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s talk about from the collector side. So Don, William, Rob, C1’s.

Are people buying those right now? Are they sought after Mark? Are you seeing anything? I’ll bring a trailer. Like what’s the market for the C1 right now?

Rob Parr: I’ve seen it going through auctions and the 53s are picking up steam. People that have collections are picking those up. They’ve had a couple of the last two Coral options.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it just sort of. Eh, because the C2, and we’re going to talk about the Stingray here in a second, the [00:09:00] infamous split windows and all those, are those more sought after than the original Corvettes because they’re just that much better?

Don Weberg: I think they are. You’re looking at the difference of drivability. I think today’s market, today’s buyers are more interested in friendly drivability than collectability.

William Ross: I think People that are buying that C one, probably the biggest reason, in my opinion, they’re balancing out or completing their collection. I got C2, C3, I need a C1. And I said, they didn’t build too many and especially ones that are nice and collectible, they don’t need tens of thousands of dollars of restoration work.

But I think a lot of those people buy it because, well, I need to have it complete my collection. I got every other one. I need that one. I think that’s what they do just so they’re lined up. They look nice.

Rob Parr: We have on our cover, we have a 57 Corvette, black with a silver code, red interior, gorgeous. And people are buying them for the look.

I mean, they’ll put them on a trailer, take it to an event and drop it right off. They’re not driving them around. It’s really purely for collectability.

Don Weberg: Building on what both of you are saying. I’ve got two friends, one’s got a 53, one has a 54. One of them. You’re [00:10:00] absolutely right, William. He bought it because he did have a C two.

He had a C four. He had very little Corvette. He just wanted a C one. He drove it, he hated it, and he never drives it. He just can’t stand that car. It’s terrible to drive. The second guy is more of a blue collar guy, and he like me, and I totally agree with him. I always thought the 53, 4 and five was one of the most beautiful cars Chevrolet ever built.

I just thought it was. Gorgeous the way they laid that car out. Very gorgeous.

Crew Chief Eric: It is and it has those same sort of fluid lines like the 356s and the Jags and some of the other cars of the era that you mentioned. Those really kind of bulbous roadsters that were out there. You mentioned the Thunderbird and that was more of a luxury convertible.

Whether we dive into was Ford trying to compete or trying to keep up the Corvette sort of stood alone. If you look at American sports cars made by the big manufacturers, there weren’t many at all. Like Corvette was sort of a new territory. They got it wrong. Then they kept refining. And so they didn’t just keep going.

Can it, which was awesome. So somebody had the [00:11:00] vision and the tenacity to say, you know what? Okay. The six cylinder, let’s get rid of that. We got to add door handles, all these kinds of things. We’re going to keep making it better. If you look at the C1 all the way up to 61, 62, when they started to phase it out, it went through a metamorphosis.

Like you line up the 54, 55, 56, you know, sort of like that Johnny Cash song. They’re just interesting. And if I think I was a C1 collector, I’d want to have almost one of every year. If I was that nerdy about C1s, but we do have to kind of move the story forward into the C2 into this sudden golden age of Corvette, which was interesting because it’s Corvette versus the world.

There’s nobody else. Mustang didn’t exist. yet. Chrysler still hadn’t figured its muscle cars out. That hadn’t happened yet. Corvette was in uncharted territory against Porsche and Ferrari and Jaguar and all the Europeans that we already knew. So C2 was a ground up redo, carries nothing over from the C1, right?

Other than maybe some rear trailing arms or axles or stuff like that. But As far as chassis and design [00:12:00] go, it was a redo.

Don Weberg: Yeah. The C2 was a groundbreaking car.

Crew Chief Eric: And what’s interesting is the C2 for Mark and my generation, I don’t want to put words in Mark’s mouth, but that’s the Corvette I fell in love with because when I was a kid, the C4 was just still sort of new and we’ll get to the Barbie Corvette as I like to call it as we go along here and the C3, because it looks so much to me like the Trans Am and stuff of that time.

Jokes aside, the C2 was just so striking. It was angular and the split window and it’s deceptively large, but then it’s really small when you compare it to other cars and it had hips, but it didn’t, it was straight and sort of set slab sided and every angle you look at it, it sort of changes, it’s mystical in a way.

It just sucks you in. It’s such an interesting and unique design. There’s not another car ever that looks like a C2 Corvette.

Mark Shank: And you forgot. Oh, yes. Yes. Geez. Maybe the coolest thing a car can have. C2. You’re right. It’s the golden age. Like you mentioned earlier, Eric, like where are these things selling?

Like if [00:13:00] you compare a C1, C2, C3, C3 gets thrown off by the L88 from a transaction price perspective. Take the L88 out of the data set. You struggle to find a C3 that sells over a hundred grand. You look at C2s and there’s just tons and tons of C2s that transact over 100, 000. And your C1s are in that 50 to 200 type range.

It coincides with the demographic boom, the baby boomers coming of age. So it becomes this thing that they want when they actually get some disposable income in their 40s and 50s and 60s. And so it had that benefit to it. But I agree with you. Like to me, the C1 was this kind of GT cruiser type car. And the C2 was, to me, it was a sports car.

It was badass. And it was, it looked angry and fast.

Don Weberg: You’re right. The designer C2 knocked people on their butts. It was like nothing they’d ever seen before. But remember they had to play a little catch up because in 1961, the E type was born and there was a car that just, I mean, just talk about a gorgeous car.

It does everything right by [00:14:00] design. And like the Jaguar for the first time ever, you could have Corvette as a hard top coupe. Yeah. That beautiful sloping roof with a split design, a boat tail. Yeah. Well, of course, if I’m remembering correctly, that was

Crew Chief Eric: Earl, Harley J Earl.

Don Weberg: Huge fan of those early Bugattis or the boat tail cars from the thirties.

And that’s where Boattail came from.

Rob Parr: Right. Shinoda was the designer of that car. And, and Guntholf totally inspired it. But we’re

Don Weberg: forgetting one other designer who was huge on styling. In fact, if I’m remembering correctly, he was actually the first one on deck to help Harley J Earl style the Vision.

Shinoda is the one that finished it off. And that is Peter Brock. My understanding was Peter Brock was first charged by Harley Gerald to help him style the vision, which he did. Then he left. Why? Cause he had to go work for Carroll Shelby. Then Shinoda stepped in and he finished off the design. Shinoda though, he was with Corvette for a long, long time, but to your point, it was the first [00:15:00] time you can get Corvette in a coupe, which what makes it again, much more user friendly.

It had a larger interior, which again, made it more user friendly. I mean, I’ll put it this way, six foot three, 330 pounds. I don’t fit in a lot of cars. I fit in a C2, not tremendously well, but I can get in it and I can drive it. C1, I really can’t drive that car. It’s just too tight for me. So they increased everything, but the styling to your point, Eric, you could look at that car all day long and still find new nuances that turn you on about it.

When you look at the side profile of a C2, you have that razor sharp edge that breaks the car almost in half. And you have this undercut, which is incredible. If you look at the 70 to 81 Firebird and Camaro, it too had that sharp cut. But what’s funny is when you look at De Tomaso, Ghia was huge at using that line right down the fender.

You even saw it in the Granada for God’s sake. So I think that car, just by a styling standpoint, was just [00:16:00] absolutely salivating. It was wonderful. And knocked it out of the park for sure. It was fantastic. Plus you had that 327, which was as flexible as a rubber band. I mean, that thing would do all kinds of crazy stuff.

Of

Rob Parr: course, Dunkelhard had the 327, came out in 62, and that really added a lot of performance and added more engine options. So you could have more power. And then they started fuel injection. I think back in 57, I want to say.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s what they call the fuelies, right?

William Ross: Yeah. The fuelie. Yeah. They’re Rochester mechanical fuel injector.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. Which you make more power by throwing that in a box and putting carburetors back on, right? Yeah.

Don Weberg: We have the 23 and 57 when you fuel injected it, if you did what they called the Duntov PAM, and when you did the heads, You could make 283 horsepower that today doesn’t sound like a hell of a lot. I mean, I think my Ford flex makes more than that right now.

No turbo.

Crew Chief Brad: I mean,

Don Weberg: that’s what it’s doing, but for 1957 to make one horsepower per cubic inch, that was a huge, huge deal. Remember those mid to late fifties, who is everyone chasing was [00:17:00] Chrysler. They had those monster Hemis come on the C300. Well, what was it named after? 300 horsepower. And what was it? 331 cubic inches.

Then it was 354. Then it was 392. I think was the last of the, those Hemis. So for Chevy to come out with a small block that made 287 horsepower. And let’s not forget, even the big fat Bel Air weighed a lot less than any Chrysler you put it up next to. So when you have 287 horsepower with a lightweight body, And let’s put that in a Corvette.

Now your Corvette has graduated more to compete against the original Jag, Aston Martin, and of course your aforementioned Porsche and all the Italians. I hate to say it. They were terrified of Corvette. They don’t admit it, but when you do the history and you look at the Italians knew what Corvette was before Corvette knew what Corvette was.

It’s one of those situations where, you know, you have a father who sees his son and the father knows. He’s never going to be like me. He’s going to be an artist. He’s going to be some, and the father is not necessarily disappointed. It’s telling, and yet the son has no clue, no clue yet [00:18:00] what they are going to.

Potential

Crew Chief Eric: is yeah, exactly.

Rick Hoback: Definitely more drivable. Even the later C2s versus the early C2s. There’s a big difference there and just some drivability. They’re all similar, but maybe the bushings.

Crew Chief Eric: I remember seeing an early C2. And it was up on jack stands, no wheels. And I’m like, oh my God, drum breaks all the way around.

You gotta be kidding me. Guys, race these cars. Like you’re out of your mind.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. They’re just not as enjoyable. Later ones are better.

Don Weberg: When you go see two, you really, really get to see Zorak or Stuntal’s handiwork in there because for the first time. And I believe it was 1963 with that whole new chassis.

You had a four wheel independent suspension. Yes. You had the four wheel drum brakes, you know, GM moves at a glacial pace. You know, be thankful. We were able to get a four wheel independent suspension, but the chassis was completely retuned. And Zora had a lot to do with that retuning.

Rob Parr: How does it compare to driving a C3 in your opinion?

Or is there any noticeable difference?

Rick Hoback: They’re similar. I think the C3 probably drives better. I’ve probably been spoiled on some of the ones I’ve driven too. I’ve driven some original ones and then some of them had [00:19:00] been gone through with, we’ll say OE style or basic aftermarket bushings and stuff, put back in them.

And then I’ve driven some race versions, which is a whole different class. I think they’re similar. I think the three seat drives a little better. Better. And then obviously when we get to the C4, it’s drastically different. They’re all fun.

Crew Chief Eric: And we’ll talk about why that’s important. That lineage starting with the C2 carries through some other cars.

And like we said before, the C1 sort of stands on its own. And then even though there’s been eight generations of the Corvette, that can be kind of lumped together, but we’ll get into that as we go along. So one of the things I want to sort of just pick apart on the C2 is C1 was sort of like, well, okay.

But if you look back. And this is where it gets fuzzy for me because it’s not my generation, but I look at it and go, wow, that’s a cool car. I see some of these historical pieces, some of these movies, and you hear stories about how, like they were given C2s to astronauts and then celebrities were driving them.

And then you got guys like Mark Twain. Donahue behind the wheel and Parnelli Jones. And it’s like, wait a second, who was [00:20:00] behind the marketing for C2 Corvette that suddenly turned it into America’s heartthrob sports car. How did that happen? Zordonta backdoored

William Ross: everything. Cause there was the gentleman’s agreement for that period that the manufacturers wouldn’t support racing or put that into it, but.

Duntov backdoored everything to teams to help support them to do that. And if you’ve got a race team, you’re getting free stuff. That’s what you’re

Don Weberg: going to use. I mean, case in point, you brought it up, Eric, the Comorati Corvette. There were three other Corvettes entered that year in 1960. 1960, that was toward the end of the C1’s lifespan.

As William is saying, those three Corvettes, they were not backed by General Motors. They were backdoored. I saw Arcus Duntov and dealerships and some of his fun guys in the parts counter building these cars specifically for competition. But I think those are the cars that really, especially for racing aficionados, I think those were the four cars that 1960 at Le Mans, they were the four that [00:21:00] really.

But Corvette on the map, because up to that point, as far as I can remember, Corvette really wasn’t competing all that much, but for the most part, it was pretty quiet. It was, you know, a bunch of privateers at Riverside, et cetera. And then all of a sudden here’s these four that show up at arguably the most grueling race that we have.

They all did pretty good against the world’s best sports cars with the world’s best drivers. Here are four Corvettes, four Yankees that come out of nowhere and say, we’re here to play. We want to play ball too. We want you to take us seriously. But I think that’s what put them on the map.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ll actually want to turn this back to Rick and Mark for a second, because Mark was talking about how C2s are transacting in the collector world.

And there’s a lot more of them than I think we realize. There’s tons of them in collections. You see them at car shows, you see them at car week, you see them in private. Do they hold their value when they’re modded? Are people still resto modding them? Has the C2 hit a point where it’s now unobtainium, you’re better off with a virgin one.

Where are we in the collector [00:22:00] space with C2?

Rick Hoback: The demographic of who likes them and who was around them in the age group and their availability of having plan to buy one. I think there’s way more C2s than C1s on the market for sale and they were affordable. I mean, I’ve owned three of them and I was picking these up for a quarter of the price of a C1.

C1s weren’t even in my range. I would have bought one. Couldn’t find them. Couldn’t afford them. They were way different than that C2. So I think those are some of the reasons there. I don’t want to call them better. They’re just more available, more collectors have them in their collections. Digging

Mark Shank: through some of the data on bring a trailer and comparing the generational sale, they kind of track the volumes.

You’ve got more than twice as many C2 transactions on that as you do C1. The C1s, they’re in a more narrow band in the 50 to 100k range. They certainly have ones trading in the 100 to 250 for particularly, uh, special stuff, usually 53s, kind of first year. Collector items. Whereas in the C2s, your 67 and your 63 split windows [00:23:00] are the ones that really demand the premiums.

And those are the ones that are in your 300, 000 range, but there’s a bunch, right. You know, just looking at the transactions. It’s like, if you just have one and it’s in good, reasonably original condition, then, then it’s a very valuable thing, but they had good sales volumes for the other years.

Rob Parr: I’ve noticed a couple of things about the C2.

I frequent the Corvette forum quite a bit. And I find that the convertibles sell for less than the coupes. It was for a while, the big blocks were going from a lot more, but now some of the people, because of the handling and the heavy weight of the 65 at 396 and 427 and six and seven, some of the people are going back to this 327 motors.

Because the handling, it’s just easy to drive corners better, but yeah, definitely convertibles. If you’re trying to find one for a better price, you’re going to be better off getting a convertible than a coupe.

Rick Hoback: My 67 that I currently still own that I am probably looking to sell this year because it’s a pro street professionally built and done drag car.

By a gentleman that owned multiple, I [00:24:00] forget at one point, I had like 14 Bloomington gold Corvettes, which is the top of the top Corvettes in his collection, a gentleman named Mark Tate. I bought this car off of, I worked on his team when I was a kid and they taught me a whole bunch of stuff. So I’m hoping that the modded market is still holding on.

But to be honest, I had a 1967 big black car that was all original. It would probably be worth three times as much, at least. This car still may be worth up to 100, 000, but an all original one would be 300, 000. I see a lot of these cars coming out in the autocross world and honestly the road racing world a little bit, but more in the autocross world.

Guys are finding beat up bodies and throwing chassis or tons of suspension pieces underneath them. There’s a lot of them. I mean, if you go to a good guy’s, uh, event, you’re going to probably see four C2 Corvettes running versus all kinds of other stuff, including, you know, the C5 Corvette is a lot of good guys and they race each other.

And I watched Danny Pop this weekend in his 1972 [00:25:00] Corvette beat everybody, including C5s. In the autocross. So I think there’s a lot of action with that C2 going on coming out of Barnes. People are finding them. They’re just beat down and haven’t been on the streets in decades. That’s really what we’re going to continue to see.

People will try to restore them, but some of them, I just, I think the pro touring world is going to start gobbling the really bad ones up and people are going to start modifying these things right or wrong. I don’t know the values in an original, but they’re only original ones. And once they’re not, it seems to pull the pricing down quite a bit, unless you invest a ton of money to make them extraordinarily original.

Don Weberg: You might be seeing a lot more pro touring modified vehicles out there, but when you go back in the day, that chassis was world class, and coming off the C1 into the C2, what really made that car? Well, hell, the whole damn thing. I mean, you had a body that was spectacular. You had a choice of a real hardtop body.

Poop for the day, there was nothing that could touch it in that price range. Yeah. The Jag was there and the Jag did damn good, but the Jag [00:26:00] was finicky and the Jag was still a six cylinder car. So for that torque, you weren’t going to beat the 327, not with that car.

Mark Shank: You know, the C3 is a different beast because it was around for so long and they actually did sell the snot out of it throughout the seventies, 40, 000 units a year, and just a ton of them sitting around, but it’s not as love of a model.

By any means.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s a great segue into 1968 at the birth of the C3s.

Don Weberg: And the C3, yeah, they were selling in volume, but they were entering the dark era of the 1970s. You had your emissions controls. You had your efficiencies worried. You had your heavyweight bumpers. We were going into a whole experimental era for the government’s demands.

And yeah, we weren’t sure what we could do. Corvette still held it alive. They were relying heavily on the C2 chassis. Which gives you an idea of how good it was. They didn’t have to change very much for the C3.

William Ross: That motor sit back behind it for an axle. Is there a little bit? No,

Rick Hoback: it’s kind of right there.

It looks like it would sit back [00:27:00] because the hood’s so long. It’s not really, if you’re kind of stretching for like, is it close to mid engine? Not

Don Weberg: really. The C4 is the one that brought that engine back into the firewall. That said, you had this drastically changed body. Again, the 427 segued into the 454, but we had the LT1, which was an incredible 350.

So now you’ve got almost the power of a big block, but in a small block package revved like crazy. It was a fantastic car. I think the C3 is one of the most amazing Forbats ever made. If for no other reason. All the advances it gave to the point to where they segwayed over into the next Corvette’s body style.

Crew Chief Eric: C3, the longest production run of a Corvette by any stretch of the imagination. The only one that comes even close to that after that is the C4. But C3, 1968, All the way to 1982. And as you said, Don, based on the C2 chassis, continuing to evolve that, but we sort of got that long hot dog sheet, right? And that’s why I always equate it [00:28:00] with the Trans Am.

And I know that they’re not similar, but there’s so many design cues and so much design language that’s shared between the Trans Am. The Firebird, the Corvette at that time, it’s the T tops, it’s the rake of the windshield, things like that. Now, the early C3s with the little bobtail, with the 427, with, you know, Mako shark nose, because if you look at some of the Corvette prototype that came out in between, you know, there’s the Aerovette and all these other things that they were working on at the time.

Those early C3s were really cool, but as they got older, 20 plus years of production, you’re like, they got bigger and they got heavier and they got rounder and they, you know, started to hide the five mile an hour bumpers and all those kinds of things. So C3s, good, bad, or indifferent. Are they the soft spot in the market?

Are they even worth considering? What can you do with the C3?

Rick Hoback: So for me, I segment the C3 into like two groups, 68 through 72, the chrome bumper stuff, kind of the evolution of that C2, they still have very sharp lines. If you look at the front and rear haunches and the way [00:29:00] they designed it, they still have very sharp.

Edges when you sit in one, like you can see the front fenders rise up over. It’s just a great view from sitting back in one of those cars. The dashboards are amazing and see one, two, and three. I think there’s some of the coolest dashboards that have been out the waterfall design down the center. There’s a lot of cool things about those cars that they designed into them.

The C3 got that fiber optic connected to the lights to kind of show you what’s going on inside the car. And I really enjoy, like I said, the early, the first four years that 73 has got a half a Chrome bumper. It’s got a Chrome rear and a fiberglass rubber front, whatever you want to call that. And then they kind of did get a little bit, I don’t know, boring, I guess.

I mean, they can be exciting, but I kind of draw that line in those first four years of, to me, those are the ones that. Either I choose to focus on, or you know, my family maybe birthed me into that. And Chrome is where it’s at. And anything without Chrome doesn’t

Don Weberg: count. And it, it’s interesting that if you look at the C3, especially the earlier one, you’ll see the evolution from C two.

Yeah, those [00:30:00] haunches, they were in the C two, they’re just much more pronounced in the C3. The C3 was like a Batmobile. I mean, that thing was just. all over the board. And when you looked at it from the side, you had that what they call the coke bottle body shape. But when you talk to some people, no, they see a woman laying on her side, you know, they see that half hourglass shape, which is very interesting.

So they made the Corvette very voluptuous. And when you look down on the top, Again, you have a sort of hourglass shape. That car is incredible.

Rick Hoback: I’ve come in the last couple years to like the later years more but I still don’t love them as much as the first four years and I just am kind of okay with the Rest

Crew Chief Eric: and i’m with you those later ones.

I always kind of fall back to the movie with Mark Hamill and Annie Potts, exactly. Right? Like how much more gaudy could you make a C3? And that’s the movie that sort of does it for you.

William Ross: I’m a big fan of the 81 Corvette because my dad actually bought my mom that car. And she had that. And I love those things.

I remember riding in the back, no back seat, but in the [00:31:00] hatch, you know, back days, it didn’t matter. My brother took his driving test in that car, but I always have a soft spot for those. I’d love those too.

Crew Chief Eric: And every time you see one of those, it reminds me of like something from Death Race or it’s just, I don’t know.

I can’t get over it.

Don Weberg: Believe it or not, when it comes to the C3 outside of the LT1, my favorite one was in fact, the 82. The last of the generation, the gaudiest, the biggest fenders, the aero flares every which way, frost fire injection on the side. That car was so proudly in your face. I am trash. I had to love it.

I just absolutely had to love that car.

Crew Chief Eric: Having driven Trans Ams and stuff. It’s just like, God, are these cars. So alike to me

Don Weberg: now, you know eric you brought up trans am you brought a firebird camaro, etc And isn’t it interesting and nobody wants to talk about this. Sorry guys I am a trans am guy to the core trans am hot corvette a lot about downforce and that was something that You just don’t hear about because if anything, Corvette taught Trans Am.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Who was the first one to be [00:32:00] wearing all the skirts for downforce? Who had the spoiler? Who had all that stuff? Sorry, guys, that was Trans Am. And why did they do it? They figured out that downforce is a good thing and it would hold those Trans Ams down. Trans Ams were heavy enough to hold themselves down.

They didn’t need a hell of a lot of help. Corvettes did, and that largely came from the Pontiac school.

Rob Parr: You know, it was interesting you mentioned that, Don, about the Trans Am, because even the formula that you could get a 400 engine, even a 455 up until 76 versus Chevy dropped the 454 after 74, and you could get a Pontiac 400 all the way up to 1979.

So it was actually ahead of the Corvette in some ways. And they fought him a long time ago. It was a battle inside the General Motors.

Don Weberg: Yeah, the Trans Am was definitely Corvette’s number one enemy in terms of, you know, the two brothers who fight all the time, you definitely had to fight. I mean, I mean, let’s face it.

It was Pontiac versus Chevy for a long time, you know, Trans Am and Corvette were really where it came down to neck and neck. And yeah, they had the 455. They had the 400, they had the four speed. They, I mean, they were, and the [00:33:00] downforce again, when it came to the aerodynamics and a lot of people made fun of Trans Am, because it was so garish.

It was so outlandish. It had all these scoops and flares and spoilers and wings and whatever. But when you drive a Trans Am and I mean, when you actually, and okay, Eric and Rick, because both of you were race car drivers, I’m just a putz who’s running around trying to piss off cops. When you drive it around trying to piss off cops, you realize, God damn, this thing really does hold the road.

This thing anticipates your every move. And then when you move over to a Corvette, you feel that DNA. You feel that and you wonder, okay, who had it first? Was it Corvette or was it Trans Am? Nobody wants to talk about that, but it’s the truth. And the one with all the flares and all the scoops was the 82, which is ironic because it was, Probably the slowest one that they ever made

Mark Shank: easily fixable now

Don Weberg: when you get in that 82 Because it’s so slow.

It holds the road really really well Rick if you haven’t had the opportunity get yourself an 82 and get out there on that track and you run the bejesus [00:34:00] out of it Now don’t mind when the beetles outrun you because they will right they will but you’re gonna look cooler Losing. Okay, you’re going to look cooler losing.

Rick Hoback: My C3 is a little bit, again, if you don’t know by now, guys, I like to modify cars. My 68 has full suspension from van steel. It’s a big block car, but it’s a more powerful big block and it has a pro charger on it. It’s very rowdy. And so I don’t really stick to the purest, even though again, they’re worth more money, but I just can’t do it.

I think I enjoyed the C2 experience a little bit more, but it is nice to have the variety of having those big front wheel wells that pop up over everything else when you’re driving a C3. That fender view alone is worth the price of admission. From

Crew Chief Eric: a performance perspective, let’s say taking a C3 to the track or to autocross, I mean, I grew up watching my dad compete against early bodied C3s.

Well, 914 versus a C3 Corvette, that was like David versus Goliath, but they were amazing to watch those [00:35:00] guys drive those cars at speed to see the footage of the early days of C3s at the track. But I don’t see them anymore. I don’t see them really at car shows that often anymore. What’s happened to all the C3s?

They made them for so long. Where have they all gone?

Don Weberg: That’s a great question. And I think right now, especially if you look on the market, except for the C4. You can get a tremendous bargain for a C3, even some of the earlier ones, even the LT1s, they’re getting up there as the big blocks are.

Mark Shank: They’re almost all basket cases though, that’s the thing.

It’s not like the car that got maintained. But I’m with you by the way, I just would like to point out, I would rather a pre emissions era C3. Post emissions era C3? Yeah, 1982. All the way. Full stand. Full mullet. Mullets are back now, by the way. Like, you see all these teenagers just running around with their damn mullets?

They have no idea what they’re doing. Put that kid in an 82

Don Weberg: vet. He could afford it, too. When you go back to the 70s or those extreme early 80s, too, remember we were all crippled by Emissions, efficiency and [00:36:00] safety. Corvette was trying to keep its head above water. Corvette was trying to be the performance car of America.

And that’s just my 10 cents, but you can get one hell of a bargain. You really can.

Rob Parr: Well, you have to understand too, in the, in what we call the Malays era, you had situation where. They were having this transition, the luxury car versus a sports car in order to keep it going and keep continuing to produce those units,

Don Weberg: you know, I keep rooting for the LT one 70 or 71.

The first year for the LT

Rob Parr: one, and

Don Weberg: then 72 was the last year. And 72, if I remember correctly, it was the only year available with. Air conditioning, which Rob plays right into your conversation of, we had to make them more luxurious because we’re selling a high end sports car. We can’t justify the price because it’s not so fast anymore.

The LT1 kind of held that flag, but it came with air conditioning in 72.

Crew Chief Eric: Now here’s the funny part about the C3. I have grown to appreciate it more. As I’ve gotten older, maybe it’s cause, you know, you lose taste buds as you get older, you know, you like more bitter things and you look at the C3 and go, you know, it [00:37:00] doesn’t taste so bad, but realistically the design language of the C3 changed so much in those 20 plus years.

You had the T tops, you had the convertible, you had the fixed roof coupe, you had the one with the glass in the back. Like there’s these things that carried from the C2 all the way into the C4. Those rear lights. Especially in the later C3s became iconic to Corvette from the C4 onwards. That was not a design cue from the early cars, those four round rear taillights.

And so what I’ve noticed about a C3 is I check the door at the plane Jane, you know, with the rally wheels. I’m like, I’m not interested in those. What I’m interested in are the lowered wide body GTU M suspension. Bondurant, there’s these crazy Resto modded c3s, especially in black the c3 looks really good and i’ve come around on them And every time I see like another sima c3 or something on, you know, one of these restoration shows on netflix [00:38:00] I’m, like man, I want a c3 but is it worth it?

Rick Hoback: No Financially, it’s not. I’d say that almost about any car. They’re never worth throwing 20, 30, 50 grand at. Never. But, they are cool. I do agree with that. When you widen the already wide body, or the wide appearance, and you make them fit a big tire, you lower them down, you make them look real sexy, throw in a couple hundred extra horsepower, they really are cool and fun.

They really are. If you just want a cruiser, the 180 horsepower, Perfect. If you want to have some fun, they can be very fun. They really can.

Rob Parr: The trick is to buy one that’s already been done and only use the next person buying it because you never get back the money you dump into it. Very true.

Don Weberg: You’ve got to be really careful with those LT1s because yeah, a lot of them are trashed out.

And the LT1 had a lot of very special parts in that engine that made it do what it did. If they’re not rebuilt correctly, you’re ruining the whole thing. And that’s really tragic.

Rob Parr: They’re going up to 70, 000. I mean, the value of those are really [00:39:00] going through the roof right now. We’ll probably hit six figures in the next couple of years.

Crew Chief Eric: Wait, wait, wait. You’re saying one of the most. Special. C threes is under a hundred grand. Isn’t that a bargain? Yeah, that’s a bargain. Yeah. So how soft is the C3 market then? Like how cheap can you get one of these things?

Don Weberg: Think about a regular C3. My God, if you go to 1975, if you get a 75 C3, what? Mark, Rick Rob?

All day long. 75.

Rob Parr: Five. 10. 15,000.

Don Weberg: 10,000 For a mint condition? One. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe 12. And yet you’ve still got the chassis. And you’ve still got the look. So to Rick’s point, you could modify the bejesus out of that Corvette and you’ve still got a great chassis already, but if you make it even better, guess what?

You’ve just taken a 10, 000 Corvette. I don’t know how much money you’re going to dump into it, but all of a sudden you’ve got a performance car.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. So, so Rick, I know it’s not worth it, but what’s the aftermarket like on a C3? How moddable are they?

Rick Hoback: They’re pretty good. So there’s a company in Florida called Van Steel that makes almost anything you need to put underneath those things.

They make remarkable, beautiful. Stuff I’ve [00:40:00] raced against cars. I’ve driven a few, but I probably raced against more that have pretty simple packages. I mean, they use the same frame and typically like the same arms, but they’ll put a really good set of like JRI shocks under it, they’ll do some spring adjustments.

They’ll do some solid bushing or blocks in the back of them to kind of soak up some of the rubbery, squishy stuff. And they’re fast stock brakes with a good pad. They are really fast specifically on an autocross. I mean, road course is a little different, but on an autocross, they can compete. They’re a lot of fun.

Don Weberg: Are you a sinner because it’s no longer original? I don’t think so because you’ve got the darkest era of Corvette and now you’re making it fun. Now you’re making it more enjoyable. Now you’re making it. I mean, Eric will tell you all day long. I’m more of a handling guy than a speed guy. I really don’t give a shit about horsepower, torque, all that stuff.

It’s fun. It’s cool. I grew up Fiat. Believe me, I have the art of driving slow mastered, but I know about handling. And I think that’s why I celebrate the 82 Corvette so much, because if you drive one, you’ll see [00:41:00] what I’m talking about. They’re absolutely incredible the way they’re put together. I don’t know if it’s that whole last of the breed thing or what, but they’re You take a 74, five or six, modify it to where it’s just fun.

I’m not even talking about competing with racing or the under thing. Make it fun. If you’re keeping

Mark Shank: her on the road, then you’re doing a good thing, right? I mean, especially for something in that volume, I think in the C3, you know, look at sales volume. So the biggest year was 79 sold over 50, 000 Corvettes.

So I think those late seventies models. A 1979 four speed looked really clean, clean interior, look good on bring a trailer. Not exactly the most value conscious buyers on bring a trailer transacted just two months ago for 13, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: What?

Mark Shank: That’s a lot.

Crew Chief Eric: What? To me, that’s a steal. I can’t buy a WRX for 13 grand.

Are you kidding me?

Mark Shank: I mean, and you know, yeah, of course, if you’re not in California, you can rip all the emissions crap off that. And I mean, without even doing any real modifications, you can [00:42:00] make that a nasty, nasty platform.

Crew Chief Eric: You should buy everybody a C3 for Christmas. It was

Mark Shank: clean. It looked good. It was black.

I mean, it’s not amazing. I’m not trying to say it was made, but it was clean. You know, the good interior was clean and all together and looked good. It wasn’t like torn and ratted out or anything at all.

Rob Parr: You know, what’s interesting now, going back to the Trans Am versus Corvette. Is the fact that the Trans Am in 1979 is worth easily double the price of a Corvette, the nicest Corvette, unless you have an anniversary model from 78, you might get a little closer, but they always were lower in value.

They never came back up to the hype amount when they were back in the day.

Don Weberg: The Trans Am though fell in the shadow. If you remember a few years ago, when. Mopar went absolutely psychotic. You couldn’t touch a Cuda. You couldn’t touch a Challenger. You couldn’t touch any of that. Well, guys, realize, well, I’m not going to spend that on the Charger, whatever it was.

I’m not going to spend it because of whatever reason I’ve got. They started scoping out the Trans Ams. All of you will remember for the longest time, nobody wanted a Trans Am. That was the Rednecks muscle car. That was the Maserati of the trailer park, the car nobody wanted. It was [00:43:00] embarrassing to have a Trans Am.

Now, all of a sudden, and I think largely because of those Chryslers, Grand van got caught up in it and all of a sudden the prices are going up. Rob, you brought it up too. They, in my opinion, they were the last of the Mohicans, man. They had their 400 cubic inches in 1979. If you had a four speed, you had a Pontiac 400.

If you had the automatic, you had the Oldsmobile, which is a very, very durable motor. It’s just not very exciting. The Pontiac. Had more pep to it. Long live Burt Reynolds! Yeah, and it’s true. Smoking the bandit put those cards on the map.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t want to open Pandora’s box here, but that sort of legacy for Pania continues in 1982 with the advent of Knight Rider.

But we won’t go there. Cause I know that’s an hour long presentation to itself. But what I want to do is jump us sort of now into the digital age, because we could probably talk about CA3 for the rest of the night and what we could do with it and where we could go with it. And I think there’s a lot of potential there.

So I want to put a pin in it, but 1983, I think a lot of our [00:44:00] listeners may or may not know. There is no Corvette. In 1983, there is only one in existence. Apparently, allegedly it’s at NCM and it ended up in the sinkhole when the middle of the museum collapsed or whatever. It was a prototype in 1983, but there were no Corvettes built in 1983.

The first year of the C4, a whole new car designed from the ground up yet again, like the C2. But taking some of the design language from the C3 forward into the digital era in 1984 and what I like to call the Barbie Corvette, because Barbie was associated with the C4 Corvette. A lot of things were associated with the C4 Corvette.

You started seeing it on television. You started seeing it with celebrities, much like the C2. Suddenly there’s this marketing machine behind the all new Corvette. And one of the things I’ve learned, and I’ve come to respect about the C4 Corvette, and I’ve coached in a lot of them, you know, with its funky digital dashboard and all this fun stuff, there’s a lot of restomotors, Mark Talley being one of them out west, you know, Gotham Garage and all that.

A lot of [00:45:00] guys love to harvest the C4 to build other things, because it’s probably one of the most versatile chassis. The Corvette ever built? Am I wrong in this?

Rick Hoback: Part of it’s the A arms, the leaf spring design. I think they lend themselves very easily to, we’ll call that the pro touring world, or other vehicles.

Plus I think it’s the time frame, as those were kind of expiring in the later 90s, the pro touring really started picking up. I think people were just scavenging those pieces off of a high, high, high performance vehicle in their minds. And putting it in their older vehicles. It was good timing and a great product.

Don Weberg: The C4 is to Corvette what the C2 was to Corvette. The chassis was completely re engineered. It was a whole new car from the ground up. It was very exciting. Chevrolet dumped a lot of money. Into developing that car. And if I remember correctly, part of the reason you mentioned 83, they didn’t build it.

They had a huge changeover. It was such a drastic changeover. They couldn’t go [00:46:00] into production.

Crew Chief Eric: The retooling costs and everything.

Don Weberg: Yeah. The assembly line loan went through such a absolute change. It was incredible. But also the key bar roof suddenly became a Targa. And what’s interesting about that, that wasn’t supposed to be the C4 originally was supposed to have.

And there was one guy at Chevrolet and one guy specifically at Corvette and they both had the same idea at the same time, but came from different schools of thought, one guy was looking at an ad and he saw a Trans Am and he saw the T bar and, you know, it was a dealership ad, whatever, but there’s that T bar.

And he thought, you know, Corvette should be better than Trans Am. We shouldn’t have to rely on a T bar roof. We should have full open section up there. That’d be better. The other side of the factory, there’s another guy. Who’s watching Magnum PI and he’s seeing that Ferrari 308 with the open roof. And he’s thinking that is what we need.

That is exactly what we should be doing. And as it turned out, they had an engineer who was very big on Porsche. Well, gee, golly, gosh, guess who put the Targa on the [00:47:00] map? Portia. So you had these three minds coming together and they realized, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got to get rid of that bar. Let’s open this up.

Well, how do we do that? Well, you got to stiffen that frame. You got to stiffen that chassis. You got to stiffen that body. A lot of re engineering went into the Corvette, which slowed it down again. So you had the factory on one side, slowing everything down, and then you had a slight re engineering of an already seriously amazing chassis.

I mean, that chassis was so amazing. But when they brought out ZR1, there was not a lot of modifications that had to be done. No, they really weren’t,

Crew Chief Eric: but we’ll get to ZR1, but I want to turn to William for a moment and I want him to explain to us as a previous C4 owner, how did you make the transition from Fiero to C4?

What was that like?

William Ross: You know, done with college and whatnot, and I wanted to get a car. At first I was going to get an M3. I was at the dealership and I looked at M3 and the sales individual was attractive. I asked her out. She said, no. So I said, all right, I went and bought a C4 vet instead. [00:48:00]

Rob Parr: Man. Yeah.

William Ross: So I got myself a black on black six feet, man.

That thing was crap. I met my wife with that car. I think it was great. It was a great car. It wasn’t like crazy powerful. I mean, 300 horsepower now, but I mean. Still a crap load of fun, man. I had some really good times at being 24 years old and having that car and single.

Crew Chief Eric: Oof. You were pretending to be Ian Ziering in the 90210, you know, showing up in the black Corvette.

Oh

William Ross: yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Did your mullet get longer or shorter when you went from the Fiero to the C4?

William Ross: Oh, it got shorter. No, my Fiero, man, my mullet, I even permed that thing, man. Make it curly. I bleached the top and then like I’d make it permed. in the back. Oh, yeah, man. But

Crew Chief Eric: we make fun. It is par for the era. But the reason I bring up the comparison between the Fiero and the Corvette is you went from a mid engine sports car unique into itself to this front mount rear drive near 50, 50 weight distribution.

Cause they were shooting for that back then, you know, again, like Don said, alluding to Porsche and the nine 44 and [00:49:00] some of the other stuff that was happening, you know, around the world in that type of vehicle design. What was it like making the jump? Did you enjoy driving the C4 more or did you kind of look back and go, man, that Fiero was a lot more fun?

William Ross: Well, you got to understand. I also, I had a Mustang GT between those two. Oh

Crew Chief Eric: boy.

William Ross: I’ll put it this way. If I had my options looking at, and I’m not worried about price looking at, but if I, it was a beautiful Fiero GT 88 with the fastback look to it, not the notchback, I had a notchback one, or a C4, but I’d probably take the Fiero.

Cause like to Don’s point, it’s not about the speed stuff. That Fiero handled. Like a go kart, no horsepower, but that thing was so fun to drive. So fun to drive. I mean, it was small, it was tight, you know, and it’s unfortunate that they got killed off from my understanding. You know, they had something going in the works that was going to be the next generation one that was going to just be phenomenal.

They’re going to fix everything more horsepower. I mean, just do what they want to do. Basically be a mid engine Corvette with the Pontiac badge, but [00:50:00] I ain’t happening. So I just went by the wayside. I love that for him. I mean, it’s just, it’s phenomenal.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you went there because that is something that we’re going to talk about, even on the Porsche side of this conversation, it’s that point at which no other car in the fleet can outperform, let’s say the nine 11 or the Corvette.

They’re not the flagship because there’s other cars. In the portfolio, like the Cadillacs and this and that, they can generate more revenue and more prestige and all this, but from a sports car, from a performance perspective, you don’t want the little brother outperforming the flagship sports car because Corvette, at this point, C4.

You saw a ton of people get behind the C4, like we mentioned earlier, just like the C2. Now you had Bondurant cars and you had guys like Andy Pilgrim and Johnny O’Connell and Brutal Roots. I mean, you name it. All these famous names running C4 Corvettes. They were freaking everywhere. Everybody had a C4 Corvette.

There were series designed around that car in the 80s. [00:51:00] Nobody’s going to build anything from a GM parts bin that’s going to be better than the Corvette. Even if the C4 by today’s standards is sort of a dog at 300 horsepower, it wasn’t really anything to write home about even then, because everybody else was making 300 horsepower as well.

Think about the middle eighties. Nissan’s making 300, Porsche’s making 300. Everybody’s making all these power numbers, but we got this new Corvette and people are rallying behind it. And it’s exciting.

Rob Parr: I had an 85 Corvette. And it had a very quirky four plus three transmission. The early ones had a lot of problems, a lot of recalls, and we’re kind of trashy, unfortunately.

Crew Chief Eric: Here they have horrible rear main seal leak problems and all sorts of issues like that.

Rick Hoback: You just have to watch the electronics. The electronics are real tricky. Those digital dashboards are so cool. They’re very Knight Rider. But man, there’s a lot of wires. And the thing I don’t like about cars of this era or GM or whatever, is when they started to be so technologically advanced that they almost made them so difficult to work on so much stuff in their [00:52:00] redundancies and one thing fails and it’s pointing you in 17 different directions to try to fix it.

They’re a little quirky, but a little goofy, but they’re neat. If you sit in one, they sit differently. You sit like in an inside a bathtub, like your arm. It’s almost resting on the door sill. It’s a very unique feel. I do enjoy driving them again. They’re not fast by my definition. They’re just not fast, but you can make anything fast, but they’re fun.

Rob Parr: They’re beautiful cars. They wrote nicely. In fact, I had driven a Fiero and it was felt similar to the Corvette, even though it was rear engine and less power. Chassis wise it felt similar, but

Crew Chief Eric: the question is, is the C4 second longest running production Corvette ever? They made a gajillion of them. How soft is the market?

Are they worth owning today? And what can you really do with a C4 Corvette?

Rob Parr: The secret sauce for the C4 is to get a 96. With a six speed because you have 330 horsepower also comes in the, in the grand sport version, the grand sport version costs 40, 000 now to buy on a used market, but you can pick up a 96 with a six speed in the teens.

That’s the real secret of all [00:53:00] that whole era to get that one year.

William Ross: What’s nice with the 96 too, it’s got the widened back end. It’s got the ZR1 body base. Is what it has on it. I agree to it. If the 96 way to go. Grand sports are gorgeous cars.

Crew Chief Eric: If the market is soft on a C4, C4, C3, where’s our investment money going?

William Ross: If you want to take a C4 and just do whatever the hell you want, just buy the hell out of it, whatever, you know, 94 or older. I like Rob said, you know, 96, especially if you’re buying the grand sport, even got the collector edition one, those are the ones, if you’re going to want to buy it, keep value. But again, you’re not going to drive it a ton because you don’t want to be putting the miles on it.

They look phenomenal. I love the paint jobs on the grand sports. They just look great. But if you’re going to go 94 or older, I mean, you could have at it because I mean, they just build a crap load of them. There’s so many aftermarket things out there you can do with them. Companies that can supply you with whatever the hell you want.

Mark Shank: Absolutely. They’re a modern car. They’re fast. They’re fun. They’re dirt cheap. One sold last month, 40th anniversary edition, six speed, 80, [00:54:00] 000 miles, pretty clean all the way around. Six grand. Six? Six grand on bring a trailer.

Rick Hoback: That’s super cheap. So I just worked on a 93. Again, nothing that comes in my place is normal.

So it has like 23, 000 miles and a supercharger on it, like a Paxton stuffed under the hood. Sat for like 10 years and they’re really debating whether to sell it or to fix it. And I’m like, well, if I fix it, you’re going to have thousands and thousands of dollars to fix it. Nobody wanted to work on it because they’re a nightmare to work on.

Especially with this much 1990s antiquated technology.

Mark Shank: It’s very cool.

Rick Hoback: And the only reason I really took that on is because I had built one prior with similar same stuff on it. So I was familiar with everything about that. Era of performance parts true speed parts from that era But I’m blown away by your six thousand dollar price tag because I was trying to talk to them about pricing and i’m like I don’t know if you’re gonna get what you want out of it, but it could if you get the right buyer [00:55:00] I didn’t know I don’t I don’t need anymore, but they end up keeping it.

I fix it for them They keep it. They drive it. They love it But six grand is a steal for that

Mark Shank: era of car. If it’s transacting for that on that, then what are you going to find on Facebook marketplace or, or whatever?

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So the grant sports untouchable in some respects and the ZR1 is as well. Don mentioned it earlier.

The ZR1 was sort of the crescendo for the C4. We’re going to throw as much horsepower as we can, all the good stuff, all the bells, all the whistles. And even more special paint than the grand sport. It came in some really amazing colors. Like one of my favorites is C4 ZR1 holo green, which is a dark, dark green.

It looks black from far away. Absolutely gorgeous. You know, special wheels, the whole nine yards. That’s where we started to see the Genesis. Of things like the Z06 and all these other packages. Yeah, granted they always existed in the Chevy catalog, but those GSs, you know, ZR1, stuff like that. Now we’re starting to see these new evolutions of Corvettes and make them, you know, more special sort of like Porsche has.

But the one thing I can’t get over. I look [00:56:00] at them and I respect them because I grew up around those cars, the Corvette of my generation and Mark’s generation, but I look at them now because there’s one in my neighborhood. I passed this guy drives it around. It’s like his daily driver and he’s always working on it and whatever.

He enjoys it. He drives it, but I look at it and it hasn’t aged well. You know what I mean? It feels like something from the eighties. It’s like looking at a tape deck and you’re like, yeah, that’s cool. But you’re like, that’s not cool. At the exact same time. Am I wrong? Am I crazy?

Don Weberg: I think what you’re dealing with is what we call the Aqua Velva syndrome.

Oh boy. Aqua Velva has been around since world war one, basically. And let’s face it, we grow up. Our dads use it. We hate it. We have polo. We have whatever. And ultimately we end Velva at some point in our life because works. I really think that’s where C4 is going to go because right now, I damn right. Okay.

That car is as eighties as they come. There’s only one other car that might be more eighties, maybe two, and I’m not going to get into them [00:57:00] for Eric’s sake, but that car falls right in there with those two other cars, C3 when C4 was brand new, C3 was okay. Break out the bell bottoms, break out the mullet, break out the gold chain.

Let’s get some chest hair going on here because we’re going back to the 70s. It was a horrible car. It suffered from the same problem Trans Am had. It was do 70s. Nobody wanted anything to do with it. And now here we are, the C3 and the Trans Am are both, damn, that’s cool. But the C4.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why I say it’s like Malibu Barbie.

It’s all plastic. And you look at it, it’s all sort of one piece of fiberglass, but at the time it was space age, right? It was different. It was new. It was sleek. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s aged well.

Don Weberg: So you’re saying, is it worth buying? I do think it’s worth buying. I really do. And I am a C4 fan and I don’t really fit in them very well, but what they did for that chassis was art.

And yes, those 90s C4s, if you can get one, oh my God, they are a game changing car. In [00:58:00] fact, if you drive one of those late C4s and then you drive a C5, there’s not a hell of a lot of difference. And in fact, I would venture to say, I’d rather have the C4. It’s got more personality.

Crew Chief Eric: I don’t think people realize the C5 carried over much like C3 did from C2.

So it’s sort of this repetition. We’re going to use the C4 chassis. We’re going to build the C5. We’re going to make it awesome. The only thing I think the C5 suffered from design wise was what I call the marshmallow syndrome. Everything from the nineties was soft and pillowy and just gooey. And C5 is that to me, that’s just me personally.

Don Weberg: The C4, where it loses its aqua velveness is the fact that the C5, the C6, and I’ll even go as far as to say the C7, every single one of them goes back

Crew Chief Eric: to the C4. It’s like this. never ending story of just generations of Corvette after that. In fact,

Don Weberg: I just had an argument with a guy about this the other day.

As a Lamborghini fan, again, nothing against Ferrari, but I really do love [00:59:00] Lamborghini. I have a problem with Lamborghini though, which is they’ve got to stop chasing the Countach.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Don Weberg: Ever since Kuntosh, the Diablo, well, it’s still got that flat front end. You can see that its father was Kuntosh. Well, then there was, what was the one after that?

Crew Chief Eric: Murcielago and the Gallardo. Murcielago,

Don Weberg: that’s the one I’m thinking of. Same thing, long front end, funny little doors. It’s still, you know, that its grandfather was Kuntosh. And then there was Aventador, which you know, its great grandfather. Now it’s the same thing over at Corvette. They built C4 and it was like, holy cow, we have hit the formula.

And so the C5 comes along much improved, much better car, but it still uses so much of the C4. The C6 used a lot of the C5, which it all goes back to the C4. So while we still see the C4 as Aqua Velva, much like C2, it begat the C3, even though they look nothing alike, underneath they were all the same. And I think that’s where C4 is going to come on real strong here at some point.

Nothing against [01:00:00] C5. As you say, it’s a marshmallow car, the C5. I don’t know. It’s kind of the tweener. You know, the C6 came out and was like, now we got a car. But the C5 was like that stop gap of hold on guys. We’re building something better.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s a hell of a car. It’s the car I go back to every time to people that say, I want to go to the track or I want to autocross, or I want to get into road racing and the, what should I buy?

You should buy a C5. That’s what you should buy. But I feel that the C5 sixes and sevens got tighter. They got more jet fighter. Like you’re in it. Those cars remind me of what Mazda did with the third gen RX 7s. You sort of put them on like a glove or a pair of pants. So C5 did have a short lifespan, right?

97 to 2004. And we don’t need to get into production numbers, but what I think really puts C5 on the map, two things. Zero six. Yes,

William Ross: with a notch back. Love it. If I could buy another Corvette, that’s what I wanna buy. I love that

Crew Chief Eric: car. The fixed roof coop is another thing we can argue about for a long time.

But I think the other thing is really kind of stepping [01:01:00] away from the Firehawk series, the Bonderant series, all these series that were designed around C four. Now GM comes to the table and says. Have you met Jake? Would you like to be introduced to Team Corvette? The C5R puts Corvette on the global stage in a big way.

I mean, they were already winning races. We know that they were competitive, but not until C5 did they just basically give the full bird salute to everybody and say, we’re here to kick ass.

Rick Hoback: I agree. That C5R was amazing. I mean, it got everybody’s blood pumping. And if you liked Corvettes or like American muscle car, sports car, whatever, you really gravitated towards that thing.

That thing probably sold a lot of C5 Corvettes.

Don Weberg: I would venture to say that car converted a lot of people to like Corvette. Even 911 diehards, whatever your sports car was, you saw that C5R and you thought, Whoa, wait a minute. It really was a game changer. Again, going back to [01:02:00] 1960, those four Corvettes at Le Mans, those were the ones that made people stand up and take notice of, Whoa, maybe Chevy’s got something here.

I think the same thing happened with that C5R.

Crew Chief Eric: There is something to the sound of the C5R and the later C6 and C7Rs and so on. Suddenly you’re like, wait, what was that? You don’t just hear the car. You. Feel a C5 are on the track. It’s just got this, it’s like an AMG Mercedes. It’s like in you when it’s going around and the previous Corvettes didn’t have that, yeah, they had a great sound, but it didn’t affect you the same way at the racetrack, you know, when you’re there in the middle of all of it.

So I think that’s part of the hype, but also there’s a new rivalry that comes to the table, which I think really sets Corvette apart. It was no longer. Corvette versus the world, especially Corvette versus Porsche, it was Corvette versus Viper. And you saw that with C5 and it was amazing. I mean, I remember being glued to the television watching what I thought at the time was one of the hottest battles in, you know, ALMS and [01:03:00] Le Mans and all these different series that they were competing in against each other.

Dodge versus Chevy. I mean, mind blowing stuff.

William Ross: Yeah. I always picture Earnhardt, senior and junior racing that Daytona. It always sticks in my head with that car.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent. And unfortunately things turned out the way they did for Dale senior. But oddly enough, C5 also sort of died just shortly thereafter.

So it’s sort of weird, like. How all that worked, but I think C5 left this whole new impression. You know, they talk about what you imprint on, you know, we imprinted on C4 or whatever, but the C5, holy crap, that’s just a game changer. But would I buy one today?

Mark Shank: The C5s that sell for money are actually bodied as C1 or C2.

They do one of those conversions. Like they take the C5 chassis and they put like a C1 or C2 body on top of it. And then you can sell it for 150 K. Of course, you probably spent 200 grand building.

Crew Chief Eric: So where does that put the base model? Let’s say Z51 versus the Z06 in the [01:04:00] market. In the

Mark Shank: last 12 months, we’ve got 181 transactions on bring a trailer for C5.

It’s kind of funny. Like your Z06 is transacting for the same as you’re like commemorative edition convertible. You know, they’re all kind of in the mid twenties.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s really good for a Z06.

Mark Shank: So the early C5. The higher mile ones going for in the teens, 95 percent of transactions are between 20 and 40 K most of them between 20 and 30.

Crew Chief Eric: And this is why we say as a starter track car, they’re fantastic because you could go out today and buy a spec Miata for 30, 000, or you could buy a Z06 and slap tires on it and do nothing else for 30 grand. And go to the track. I think I would only look at a C five at the lens of I’m going to the track and I want a cheap track car.

Rick Hoback: Yeah, I was gonna say, I wouldn’t have one for a daily or just to drive around. I probably would, to be honest. If I had a really clean one, I’d drive it for a daily and drive around. But you’re right, it is a today track car. For people that are [01:05:00] starting out, want to have one car that they’re going to have for the next 10 years at track or want to upgrade from their Miata to a real car.

A Corvette. Oh, so yeah, I think they’re very affordable. They’re very durable. They’re phenomenal cars. They’re not terribly difficult to work on. There is a lot of engineering stuff in that package. So there are some quirks and some difficulties. If you’re going to change a clutch, it’s a major. Job versus changing a clutch in a traditional car, Camaro or a Trans Am or something.

It’s a lot more intensive because the transmissions in the rear, but you can see the engineering behind these cars. You can feel the engineering granted. They are a little squishy when they’re stock. The seats are terrible. You know, there’s some stuff that makes them soft and poshy and squishy, but for a couple bucks, you can get all that stuff out of there and have a fantastic track car.

Fantastic.

Crew Chief Eric: Not only that, the numbers that C5 was able to put down, you know, the 400 400, we talk about the LS2 and all this kind of stuff. But you’re talking [01:06:00] now a Corvette that isn’t some specially prepared Calloway or a sledgehammer or something making a gajillion horsepower. Like they were doing in the C4s.

You’ve got a, from the factory, 150 plus mile an hour car that can do way better than 150 mile an hour. But now you’re putting up big numbers and they’re fast. But they were also really heavy. And the reason I bring that up is I’ll never forget the ad campaign for the C6. When they were teasing it, they’re like, we’re going back to our roots.

We’re making the Corvette light again. The C6 is going to come in at like 3, 000 pounds or 3, 200 pounds. I was like, how heavy is the C5? Is it not made out of fiberglass anymore?

Mark Shank: A lot of cars ballooned in weight in that era because of the crash testing requirements that came in the late 90s. And this was the first one they designed to work with.

So I think it would make sense that the C6 got lighter than the C5. They had more time to figure out how they were going to react to the crash testing and they were able to take some weight out of it to make that happen.

Don Weberg: I always thought that [01:07:00] was a funny thing about Corvette and I said it for the C1.

They’re not light. They’ve never been light. I really don’t think Corvette has ever been considered light. As a DeLorean guy, I’m constantly getting hit with. Oh, well, those cars were so heavy, but they were 2, 800 pounds. I mean, they were nothing compared to so many other point is for 1981. I think the Corvette came in at 3, 300 pounds, almost 3, 400 pounds.

Corvette had never been light. And that’s what I always thought was weird about Corvette. I got this glass body. It weighs nothing yet. The darn thing still weighs as much as a Firebird.

Mark Shank: It was small, small footprint, small car. I mean, yeah, it didn’t have a 32 valve cylinder head, adding weight, you know, it had some things that would help it lighten up.

I’m not sure how much weight that fiberglass really saved.

Rick Hoback: They’re pretty robust. So a lot of the stuff in the Corvette was probably a little overbuilt. They used a lot of materials that were light. There’s some magnesium in them. There’s a lot of aluminum in them from the factory. The fiberglass could have been a little lighter, but in the later, in the, in the C5s, like the Z06s had like lighter glass in them for a few pounds.

The [01:08:00] engineers really did a lot to lighten them up. And I think it was a lot of, I don’t know if it’s marketing. Yes. They, they were still over 3000 pounds, but they were a beefy 3000 pounds and like the knuckles in them and the arms are strong and they’re thicker, they’re aluminum, but they’re still thick and take a lot of abuse.

If Corvette really took the stance of let’s lighten it up, they definitely would have come in under 3000 pounds easily. But because they wanted them to be robust and strong and durable, I think that’s where that extra heft, those couple extra hundred pounds are just for durability.

Don Weberg: Yeah. And I think it was worth it because, I mean, let’s face it, you put on a watch and it weighs 20 pounds.

You think a whole, I’ve got a hell of a watch here, you know? And when you drive a lightweight car, you feel it. You don’t want to feel it when you’re paying that much money for a Corvette. And I don’t care what I’m a C5R. We’re just talking about the doctor wants to commute to work in his midlife crisis car.

And it’s an automatic transmission. Corvette, they don’t want to spend that kind of money and feel vibration. They don’t want to see the hood, you know, flexing around. They want to feel quality. They want to feel something nice [01:09:00] and Corvette delivers it. I thought they all bought Cadillac XLRs.

Crew Chief Eric: So I thought that was the point, right?

The kissing cousin. Yeah. C4, baguette, C5, C5, baguette, C6. C6 is. It’s still sort of the same evolution. I think it got physically smaller. The C5 to me, when you line them all up, it’s big, it’s wide, it’s long. It’s also exaggerated by that very flat rear end, which became a design cue for all the Corvettes from the C4 forward.

It’s like, well, the pencil broke at the back. We’re just going to just make it just a wall with these four round lights in the back. So C5 is in my opinion, kind of soft. And then we get C6. We go back to those razor sharp edges, angular corners. And then we get rid of the pop up headlights for the first time in like Corvette history.

Since the C1, C2 through C5, we’ve got rollovers. We got pop ups. We got, you know, all this stuff. And we go to the fixed headlights built into the bonnet and the fenders and all this kind of thing. Is

Mark Shank: it

Crew Chief Eric: [01:10:00] me?

Mark Shank: I feel like it’d be scary. When the C6 looks like a C5, I’ll agree, right? I mean, the ZR1 and everything with the C6 was a huge deal, you know, and obviously the C6R was great.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s sleek. It looks modern, a supercar of the time, right? Corvette’s trying to elevate itself. I feel like

Don Weberg: it transcended more than just chassis, et cetera. When you look at. The two interiors between a C5 and a C6, the C6 has such better detailing, such better materials usage.

Mark Shank: C5 to C6. The C5 is a very 90s interior, right?

To me, anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: C5 felt like you were stepping into a Beretta or a Trailblazer or anything else that was on the GM assembly line at the time. It

Mark Shank: really does. Every time I think, I’m like, C5, C06, like, that’d be a blast. And then I’m like, wait, I don’t want to sit in that. Like, no, I’m with Don. If you’re going to actually drive and sit in the car and move around, the C6 is a much nicer cabin to be in for sure.

Rick Hoback: It is. I mean, they’re all evolutions, right? But I think it’s very, very, very similar to the C5. [01:11:00] It’s almost like a 55, six and seven Chevy. How. You can tell it’s the same, but they’ve changed the body a little bit, evolved the engine, there’s more horsepower, it’s an upgrade from an LS1 to an LS3, the transmissions are a little more robust, they’re just a little better, a lot of the parts transfer between the two cars, the two generations, you can take almost All of the parts and swap them.

The knuckles, the knuckles in the C6 are a little bit stronger, but they still fit C5 and vice versa. It’s almost like a half generation change for me. There’s a change, but it’s not as dressed as a C7 or the C4 change. C4 to C5. Pretty good change there. C6 to C7, pretty big change there, but I think that C5 to C6 is pretty muted.

It’s just kind of an evolution of more horsepower, a little more refinement, a little more robust, and keep that train going.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re same, same, but different. It’s sort of like, you can make your bed and it looks nice, or you can go all out and do, you know, the hospital folds and the cuffing and the turndown service.

It’s different. The same bed, it’s the same sheets, it’s the same bedspread. And [01:12:00] you’re like, man, it looks so much better. Right? So it’s sort of like taking that wrinkled shirt that was the C5 and sort of stretching it out and pressing it and going, here’s what we can do with this before we completely go insane with the C7.

Rick Hoback: That’s a good way to put the wrinkled shirts. A great analogy for that one. Feeling

Mark Shank: personally attacked right now, my wrinkled shirt. But no, but I mean, the C6 to me is very similar with the exception of the models, you know, that were obviously unique to that generation.

Crew Chief Eric: But the one thing I walked away with from C6, and I’ve heard it from plenty of owners that track them and I’ve experienced it myself, they’re extremely Twitchy the C5 being bigger and heavier and just longer.

It’s a much more planted car. It’s not as nervous. That’s the word I like to use for a C6. They’re nervous, right? They’re always on edge. I never was comfortable in a C6, but C6 prices. So Mark, all the data you’ve brought to the table so far has sort of represented the C3s, the 4s and the 5s as the soft spot in the market.

Mark Shank: Value for dollar and performance. I’m probably with you in [01:13:00] C5, particularly if you’re thinking track.

Crew Chief Eric: When I’ve looked at C6s, it feels like we’ve suddenly turned a corner and the Corvette got expensive. Is that still true today?

Mark Shank: Almost same number of transactions C5 to C6 months. Much broader spread. And I think we have the 01 to thank for that.

It’s a hundred thousand dollar car. It was when they brought the 01 back, right? Obviously the first one.

Crew Chief Eric: Since the C4, yeah.

Mark Shank: So they bring it back. It’s supercharged. It’s, for its time, crazy town power. You can get a C7 Z06, which is more horsepower than your C6 Z01, for less than you can get a C6 Z01. I think that’s because the C7 had heat problems from the factory, which really kind of dampened the aftermarket and dampened the resale values.

And it had a reputation for being very tunable. So there’s lots of thousand horsepower and filter, whoever tuner aftermarket. I can remember being sold for 15 K under sticker new when they were just sitting in dealer lots and not moving. Those were usually [01:14:00] the automatics. So I do think that it’s easier to fix those heat soak issues now with aftermarket parts for cooling.

And so it’s not necessarily a flaw. That is something you’re really going to have to deal with as an owner. Now, it’s really just that reputation that’s harmed the transaction value. So your C7 06 transacting for about 60K, C6 01 transacting around the 80K range, at least then bring a trailer with some miles on it.

They go over a hundred gay if you didn’t really drive it at all. The C6 Z06, though, is a really special car. Yeah. I mean, those selling for the mid forties. There’s been a bunch of them this year, just in May, they sold three on bring a trailer, 40 4K, 40 2K, 40 4K. The last one was 12,000 miles, $44,000, and that’s a hell of a car for $44,000.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there any delta when you step up to something special like a grand sport?

Rob Parr: What I have is a six B with a grand sport. Which is actually a track car. Quite an amazing vehicle. I’m doing a [01:15:00] few slight mods to it, but it’s been a very fun car and you can feel it nicely. You could get the L, the Ls two with 400 horsepower.

And in 2008 they updated it to the LS three, which has 400, was it 35 horsepower with a dual tone exhaust? And your grand sport has the magneto suspension, right? It does not. And actually I’m, as I’m looking on the Corvette forum, I’m better off with that ’cause you can’t get parts for it. GM is phasing parts out.

This is the aftermarket hasn’t picked a lot of them up. I’m better off without it because there’s people in there bleeding for parts and they have to get used parts.

Crew Chief Eric: And the reason I bring it up is I actually drove one with just regular coils and one with a magneto suspension, both C6s at NCM and I prefer.

Bird, the coil spring car. I just didn’t like the way the magneto worked. Everybody says it’s amazing, but for me, the response, it was only delayed, but sort of numb. It was missing a little bit of road feel where yeah, maybe the coil spring didn’t perform as well, but it just felt so much more reactive to me.

Like it communicated to me as a driver better. So personal preference, [01:16:00] but to your point, I didn’t hear too much more. About what people were, you know, were they ripping the magnetos out and putting regular ones back in? Because again, it’s unobtainium type of stuff. It’s a good idea. I feel like it was a fad.

I don’t hear about it on any of the other manufacturers anymore either.

Rob Parr: Well, they continue the production on those later on. But the thing is, that’s me. If you’re driving a lot on the street, yeah. Like you and I, if you’re gonna go, you’re driving on a tracker, you’re just gonna go out on the weekend. You don’t need it.

Mark Shank: So I’m seeing a disproportionate number of UNT transacted grand sports. They go for auction, but they don’t meet the minimum. And so 3LT Grand Sport, which is heavily optioned, right? Not a cheap option package was bid up to 29 grand on bring a trailer a few months ago, but didn’t go higher and it didn’t transact.

I’m not seeing a lot of grand sports in the closed sale. So one grand sports, 48, 000 miles, six speed 3LT, again, heavily optioned, sold for 31, 000 on. Bring a trailer just a couple of months ago. It’s kind of the only one I can find that completed it.

Rob Parr: I’m not ready to sell it right now. Even for a [01:17:00] C7, I have to very hard to consider trading up to a C7 and paying one and a half times when I pay for the C6 and you can get a pretty good bargain than C6 is right now.

Crew Chief Eric: So that being said, even the C6 is a really, really good value.

Mark Shank: Yeah. I think since you’re such a track guy, you appreciate what the Grand Sport brings to the table. It adds a lot of chassis and capability and it already has. A motor that exceeds the vast majority of the world’s talent in regards to their ability to extract something, which I think is another interesting point.

Again, as you start getting into the later generation, can you really push a T six, the zero six on a track, whether it’s 505 horsepower, or god forbid, a zero one or a C 7 0 6, whether it’s 650 horsepower. That’s starting to get into the realm of like, you know, are you buying your Widowmaker, hope your life insurance is sorted out, like, do you have the ability to acknowledge where your talent envelope is and where the car is relative to that as somebody who personally owns a car who far exceeds my talent, I have [01:18:00] to respect that car’s ability.

Don’t pull on Superman’s cape. Cause I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I think from a track perspective, an enthusiast perspective, the Grand Sport represents a really unique value proposition because it’s undervalued by the market. But because of that, it doesn’t really transact for more than a Z51.

Like it’s five, 6, 000 more than your Z51. That’s the best 5, 000 you could ever spend. You can’t turn that Z51 into a Grand Sport for five grand with carbon fiber, fenders, and all of the stuff that came with that Grand Sport. So there’s no way you’re doing that for 5k seems like 5, 000. Well spent, especially if you’re going to take it to a track.

So I didn’t start this conversation with you thinking that the C6 transport was a really great idea, but now that I’m kind of, now I’m kind of there and I’m like, yeah, that’s actually five grand more. Why wouldn’t you spend that? Like, that’s a really great deal.

Crew Chief Eric: Now let’s jump forward. C7. When I first saw that car, I said, did this just roll off the Universal Studios lot for the next Transformers movie?

[01:19:00] Because it is a step away from everything we know about Corvette. It is so angular. It is so different. It is so sharp. It’s striking and not necessarily in a bad way or a good way. And the irony of ironies. Designed by the same guy that designed the Pontiac Aztec. So that angular design language comes from years of study.

And there was a lot of hate on the C7 because the classic thought, Oh, it should look like this. And it’s not a Corvette, but it is a Corvette. It’s so muscular. It’s so this, it’s so that. I

Rick Hoback: hated them when they came out. Ugly to me. So foreign. So not Corvette to me. And then I drove one and it was all over.

It was the greatest Corvette I ever drove. It was the greatest car I’d driven at that point. possibly. It was really amazing. And then I don’t know if it made me realize what they built or why they built it that way.

Don Weberg: Well, you know, I was like you guys, when C7 first came out, I just thought they ruined it.

You know, you have a 280Z roofline, you have the rear end of a Camaro, you just ruined it. Well, as time went on, I saw more and more and more of them. And [01:20:00] gee, golly gosh, I am so in love with those cars now. It’s unbelievable how much I love C7. I call

Crew Chief Eric: it the C7. Subaru effect. You hate the current one, which makes you love the previous one, but you hated the previous one because you love the one before that one.

Right. And the WRX has the same problem. And I think Corvette is starting to begin to realize that as well versus the Porsche where the 911. You look at it, you go, it’s still just a nine 11. It keeps getting a little bit longer, a little bit wider. The lights are a little further, but it’s still just a nine 11, right?

Corvette has gone through these changes. It’s gone through these evolutions.

Rick Hoback: I don’t know. It won me off driving that car made me love it.

Crew Chief Eric: I became a believer when I went the first year. C7 came out, I was at National Corvette Museum, and were there coaching owners of brand new C7s. That car, for me, could do no wrong.

It is absolutely amazing. It was like, after all these years, it took them 50 plus years to get that formula [01:21:00] right, and C7 was the answer. So if you check kind of the cramped cockpit, Pit jet fighter interior that it has at the door. Although you could fit really well in those things. It’s an amazing, amazing car.

And it just got better with every package that they added to it. ZO six and ZR one and everything else.

Rick Hoback: I have one. I love it. It’s fantastic. I like the way it looks. When it first came out, I would have said the C5 is better. I think I’m crazy now because the C7 is way sexier than the C5. But back then, when I first saw it, no, I preferred the C5.

Crew Chief Eric: So do you say that about the C7 because of the C8? We’re going to get to that. We’ve been holding off talking about the mid engine Corvette. Is it because that’s so different yet again that you look at the C7 and go, well, that’s so different. Corvette that’s still front mount rear drive.

Rick Hoback: I think the timeframe that I hated the C7 was longer than I hated the C8 for some reason, but that C8 is so impressive.

It’s so unbelievably impressive. If you gave me a [01:22:00] choice of racing somebody for a million dollars, but I take a 650 horsepower C seven, you know, the highest horsepower, one of the C seven stock, everything stock, or the brand new C eight stock. I think I can go faster in a C eight stock if that gives it any type of, I mean, it’s 200 horsepower, 150 some horsepower down in power.

It makes up for it. All day long.

Crew Chief Eric: So what I think is interesting about C7, the price point when they launched it, they were basically giving that car away. If you were lucky to buy a C7 in the first year, today you are sitting pretty. Because what we didn’t realize as consumers, and when I stepped out of that car the first time like you did, I turned around and I looked at it, And I said, that’s worth every penny of 80, 000.

And it wasn’t an 80, 000 car at that time. It was a 60, 000 car.

Rick Hoback: 58, 000. I think

Crew Chief Eric: it was insane. They were literally giving them away for that kind of money. And I’m like, finally, they built a near six figure sports car. They’re there. They’re almost there. I kind of said in my head, they’re going to get there with the ZO [01:23:00] six.

But I also feel like even though Chrysler had. Pulled back Viper. It was no longer on the track. That rivalry had died. I still think there was a little tit for tat happening, because if you look at the Viper ACR, the very last ones, they were finishing up as Corvette C7 was coming online. And it’s sort of an answer to that because you’re like, who did they build this car to compete against?

Cause it wasn’t against the 9 11 anymore.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. I don’t know if you’re wrong. I think nobody told Corvette that that rivalry was over. I think nobody gave them the memo that ACR is dead.

Crew Chief Eric: In respect to that, they built a brilliant car. It lasted one of the shortest, if not the shortest run of Corvettes, period.

Because the C8 is not done yet. It’s only been around for four years. So C7, five years, and that’s it. As much as I didn’t like it, like you in the beginning, at the I said, I can’t believe this. They finally got it right. And now that’s it. It’s done. It’s over.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. It’s a shame. It was gone, but they came out with something better.

They came out with something better, but it really was cool.

Crew Chief Eric: Do you think [01:24:00] C7, they could have evolved that same design again? Could it have continued or was there? The C7 just that good that there was nothing else to give.

Rick Hoback: I believe that I believe if they were to evolve it, it would have been like the C5 C6 where it kind of transitioned and just was better.

They could have added more horsepower, little bigger tire. Wasn’t much more to do with suspension. I think it was at the apex. I think it was good as it was going to get.

Rob Parr: And I’ve been in a C7. I’ve never driven one. I’ve ridden in one. I’m told it’s because the last analog car was a C6. People were selling C7s to go back to C6s, again, because they missed it.

Just a lot of fun, even in a base coupe.

William Ross: I’ve been a passenger in one. Yeah, I mean, it’s got creature comforts, everything like that. And I haven’t been in like one of the ZR1s or anything like that. It’s a

Mark Shank: very well engineered car. I still love the idea of the C06 C7. The ZR1 C7 still transacts Sells for more than it was new over MSRP because it’s the last of the front engine.

They fixed the heat problems by the time they got the ZR1. I think they put 87 radiators in the ZR1. You know, so they fixed [01:25:00] the heat soak issues and it was tunable and you could add power to it. And so it just has this great reputation as the last one. The Z06 though. It’s half the price of the 01 and it is not half the car, as long as you’re not going to kill yourself, realize what you’re buying, right?

It’s a wide relative to its total wheelbase and length. So it’s going to have some kind of snappy handling characteristics that you need to be cognizant of, especially when it has 700 horsepower.

Crew Chief Eric: But it’s got a lot more smarts in it than the earlier Corvettes did.

William Ross: Yes. It’s got computers. Don’t turn them off.

The nanny’s on. So at what point internally was that decision made C8s? Mid engine.

Rick Hoback: What else? I mean, they made carbon fiber. I mean, what else? They can’t do much more other than a whole bunch of weight out of it. I mean, they had 650 horsepower. It’s never enough, but that’s enough for a stock car.

William Ross: 650 horsepower in that car.

You know, you got a lot of cars with that horsepower. I mean, that’s stupid horsepower for the street. We don’t need that. You have to wonder if the C8 was going to be a front engine again. It would have been interesting to [01:26:00] see how they would have, I mean,

Mark Shank: how would they improve on that C7? The C7 is going to have an interesting journey.

Relative to its aesthetics, I think it’s one of those things that’s going to look severely dated very soon. And I can see my kids being like, ew, they like it now give them eight or 10 years or something. But then the GTV six or, you know, other cars, they were maybe a little extreme and styling for the time.

And then they got very dated and then they became cool again. I can see it being cool again, 20 years down the road or something. I think there’s something to be said for just being the last generation of the front engine. Assuming that that’s the direction the platform continues to go in. And that will probably help the C7 from a value perspective for a long period of time.

William Ross: Again, for the money though, I mean, I go back, I buy a C5. I mean, why spend the money on a C7? I just don’t see it. No, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: just me. Oh, that’s where you and I differ, my friend. I have C7 all day long. I’m a believer. That’s for sure. C5R, C6R, C7R, multiple. Times over and over and over again, champions of [01:27:00] ALMS and IMSA and Lamar and all the pro racing series that they were in.

I mean, unstoppable team Corvette for 25 years, just kicking butt and taking names. We decide to go mid engine and I don’t think a lot of our listeners maybe know. And I wrote an article about this a couple of years ago. C8 is not the first mid engine. Corvette, it was in the works going way back in the day.

There’s three previous prototype attempts at a mid engine Corvette. They just couldn’t ever get it right. There was just something technologically not there that, which was mind boggling because you’ve got people like Porsche and Lotus and Ferrari, and you name it. That had been building mid engine cars for a millennia.

At this point and Corvette can’t figure it out.

Don Weberg: Mid engine has always been a ghost in the background at Corvette. And it was a seed planted by Zora. We’ve got to do this. You’re going to have weight distribution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I don’t think it was so much engineering or technological.

I think it was general motors and Chevrolet thing. Great idea. It’s a fantastic idea. And we [01:28:00] would have the penultimate sports car on the road, but you’ve got to think of our buyers and you’ve got to think of our dealership network. Who’s going to service these cars? Who’s going to fix these things? Who’s going to pay to fix these things?

When you hit a Corvette buyer and you say, yeah, you just paid. X number of dollars for your Corvette. You’ve saved money over a Porsche. You’ve certainly saved money over a Ferrari. You’re doing good. You’re ahead of the ball game and you got a performance car that will kick butt all day long. Oh, but we got to change the spark plugs.

And guess what? Motor’s got to come out. That’s going to cost money. We got to disconnect the transmission, the suspension, all the labor, labor, labor, labor, labor. Oh, and while you’re in there. You know, let’s start singing the European song they’re famous for. While you’re in there, let’s just rebuild the whole damn car.

American buyers, especially going back to the fifties and sixties. No, they don’t want to hear about that. So I think GM and Chevrolet kept hitting those brakes on Zora, hitting the brakes on anybody who wanted to talk about mid engine, and that is why. William beloved Fiero was killed because it was getting way too [01:29:00] dangerously close to being an ultimate sports car.

They equipped it with a V6. They were talking about turbos or superchargers in a mid engine sports car that costs way less than a Corvette. Corvette couldn’t have that. So they put a contract out on Fiero and that was the end of Fiero.

Crew Chief Eric: The same story for the GNX and a bunch of other cars are trying to take a stab at the Corvette, right?

Again, that shall not pass. That is, this is not going to happen. The point is. It’s an evolution of an idea, a dream, a passion, right? So C7 was the end of an era, and then we brought about C8, the first production mid engine Corvette. Like Rick said, I first saw it, I didn’t like it. I don’t think a lot of people like it.

I don’t think a lot of people still like

Mark Shank: it. Wish they’d stuck with a six speed, but I personally, uh, personally like them.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve talked to folks and they’re like, yeah, it’s not a Corvette. It looks like an NSX. Oh, it looks like a Ferrari. It looks like this. It looks like every other hyper car. That’s being produced by McLaren, you name it.

They all look sort of the same because when it comes down to aerodynamics, there’s really only one shape when you have a mid [01:30:00] engine that sort of cheats the wind,

Rick Hoback: the technology really makes that car fast. It is so smart. If you put a novice driver in each one, they’re going to be faster in the C8. C8’s gonna save them, you know, from killing themselves.

Those things are smart. I mean, those things are like Tesla Corvettes. I mean, they’re just smart. The C7 was still, I mean, it was smart, but man, it had some brute force. I mean, there’s a difference between, I guess

Crew Chief Eric: Everything’s a nail when you’re carrying a hammer, is that what you’re saying?

Rick Hoback: Yeah, it’s a baseball bat versus a sword.

It’s similar. Way different. One can slice and dice and the other one can just beat things up.

Mark Shank: There feels like there’s a gap in the Corvette portfolio which maybe they’ll fill this generation. They have this amazing opportunity to make a GT3 like car and they’ve started to fill that with their naturally aspirated Z06 being the monster of an engine that it is.

Now give me a real proper six speed transmission that’s geared appropriately for the car [01:31:00] and just eat the gas guzzler tax. My

Rick Hoback: personal big disappointment with the C8, the horsepower being down, I’m a horsepower guy. I like to use horsepower. I don’t like to use horsepower in a straight line. I like to use it in twisties, and I like, I like too much horsepower.

So not enough horsepower, which they’re fixing, which is something I love, and then not enough front tire. They don’t have huge front tires. I know there’s less weight up there, there’s this, there’s that, but come on. You gotta put a tire, it starts with a three. three in front of a Corvette, in my opinion.

Mark Shank: My kids light up every time one drives by the car.

I enjoy seeing them drive down the road. I hope they sell 30 to 40, 000 of them a year. I really do.

Crew Chief Eric: You know what kills me about the C8 and even the C8R? It’s the sound. With C4, Five, it’s suddenly transcended. And it’s like, you could pick a Corvette out amongst everybody else on track or on the road, or it just had this tone to it.

You know, I remember those videos. We’re going to fire up the C8 for the first time. And they uncover the car and it’s in this satin silk red thing. And they [01:32:00] fired. I’m like, Oh my God, that sounds like a Ferrari 360. Like, what is that? It’s awful. It’s like two little four cylinders running together because the way they split the exhaust, even at the track, whether it’s on TV or In person where I’ve seen him at Lamar, I’ve seen him at petite Lamar, you know, all these kinds of things.

It’s like, ugh, like I can still pick it out, but it’s harder to pick out from, let’s say the Ferrari two 96 and some of the other ones that are running alongside of it, you know, and I’m just like, it just irks me. And that’s what makes me say to myself, it’s, it’s not really a Corvette. Sort of like the new Fiero, right, William?

William Ross: And the interior of those things is horrendous. That center thing is just weird.

Crew Chief Eric: With the buttons on the passenger side. I don’t get it.

William Ross: Try to separate the cockpits to make, I don’t know.

Crew Chief Eric: They made some weird decisions on the design too. Like, The trunk has to fit a set of golf clubs and who’s making these rules up.

Don Weberg: Keep in mind though, when it comes to those golf clubs, remember who first really started pushing that was Nissan with the three 50 Z convertible. The [01:33:00] big thing was you had to have. Ability to put golf clubs in there. Well, it

Crew Chief Eric: started way before that. Nine 11 kept. Well, you could put a set of golf clubs in the front of a nine 11.

William Ross: Right. Drive by the country club and tell me how many Corvettes where you count on your hand with gonna play golf on zero. Right.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that’s what I’m saying. I’m sure they exist, but it’s silly. It’s a silly design requirement.

Don Weberg: Yeah. No one’s buying it. You think that’s why they do it? I think they’re having fun with it and they’re just making fun of the silliness.

I don’t think they mean it seriously at all.

Crew Chief Eric: Ferrari doesn’t do it. McLaren doesn’t do it. None of those mid engine cars are like, Oh, I got to carry a set of golf clubs. Really? No,

Don Weberg: no, I really think they’re doing that as joke. I really do. I think the only one who actually meant it seriously was Nissan.

Maybe Porsche took it a little bit seriously because a lot of doctors. Drive Porsches and a lot of doctors play golf.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m still not sold on the look because there’s certain design language that they carried forward from even the C4. If we go back that far, it’s that slab rear end. And I kept making the joke that the backside of a C8 looked [01:34:00] no different than a Camaro at the time, right?

It was hard to tell them apart. If they were going down a straightaway, you know, between a ZL one and a C8. But what I found interesting was redesigner of redesigners, Chip Foose. Did one of his things during COVID where he sat down at his desk and, you know, him and his camera, they sort of asked him if you were going to do this in your own way, how would you do it?

And when he was done with it, he was able to pull from the C2 and make the C8 look more like a C2 and it was gorgeous. Now, granted, it was all pen and ink or whatever, but I’m hoping. That maybe they take from other designers and say, we can continue to improve the C8. This is just the beginning, sort of like the C1 we’re starting over again.

It’s not so great, but maybe the next one, the C9 will be even better.

Don Weberg: Yeah. I think that’s what you’re faced with your point though. I think the C8. It right now has ugly duckling syndrome. You look at Corvette, when they emerge, the C4 was the one I remember because I was there when that car came out. I [01:35:00] remember the oohs and ahs and wows and holy cow.

But I also remember, Oh my gosh, this thing’s a piece of garbage. It’s a piece of junk. Because guys were not used to it. They weren’t used to that exotic looking of a car compared to the C3 and certainly compared to the C2. I think C8 is faced with that right now. And my wife and I were just behind a C8.

And as we pulled up to it, she said, is that a Corvette? And I said, yeah, that’s the C8. She said, boy, that rear end really needs some work. I said, yeah, there’s a lot going on there.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s probably the worst part of that car. Hands down.

Don Weberg: But I think you’re right though. I think Chevrolet, I think General Motors.

They will smooth things out. They will make things a little less Ferrari, a little less McLaren, and a lot more Corvette. And I think they need to do that. And, and I do think, in fact, I know C7 and C8 have both alienated a lot of loyal Corvette customers, but they’ve engaged a lot of younger customers.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s just it.

So the target demographic for the C7, C8. Are the people that saw [01:36:00] C4 when it came out that now have the earning potential and let’s say the discretionary income to afford a Corvette, and they’re not going to buy that C4 that they saw as a kid, they’re going to buy the new hot one that’s full of technology and gizmos.

What also plagues C8, let’s put the design stuff away for a second. We talked about how C7 was that 75, 000 sports car, although it was a Under sticker at 58 when it debuted in the Z 51 package and all that kind of stuff all day long. That was that near perfect, near 100, 000 sports car that GM had created.

Then CA comes out and they said, well, uh, it’s COVID because it came out in 2020. The world’s shut down. Nobody can get one. So we will offer it for 65 grand. Put your orders in today and don’t take delivery till 2022. And then suddenly the price went up and a friend of mine got a C eight and he kept it for a little while and he wanted to flip it.

He ended up paying something like $92,000 for it before all the destination charges and all this kind of thing for just a [01:37:00] Z 51. Base C8. So obviously they’re going up from there with the Z07 and all these other things that they’re going to build. The question becomes, is the C8 a six figure sports car right

now?

Crew Chief Eric: Is it really as good? And I know on track, yeah, the gizmos it’s technically better to put down a faster lap time, but for the consumer dollar, is it really as good? A car to have in your garage is let’s say a C7 from maybe that investment standpoint.

William Ross: I just looked online. You can buy a 2024 with 700 miles on it for 66 grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Where? That’s

William Ross: cheap. You know, out in the Amherst, the guy down there was 759 miles, somebody that’s looked at it as.

Crew Chief Eric: Were they fire sailing it? Cause they can’t move it. What’s going on?

William Ross: It’s got yellow colors, but I mean, if you know what I like, they’re a bunch of them on there for under 70 grand.

Don Weberg: I think we’re all thinking the same way, which is C8 is a great engineering idea.

It’s a fantastic car for Corvette. Bye. I think C seven for a long time is going to be a much better investment than a C eight. Oh yeah. If for no other reason, [01:38:00] it’s the last of the front engine Corvettes. Yep. It’s the very last one.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s like a 9 93. It’s the last of the air cooled nine 11.

Don Weberg: Exactly. The air cooled Porsches, my God.

When the 9, 9 6, the one that was first water cooled when that came out. Yeah. 9 9 3. Oh, you couldn’t touch them today. I mean, would you rather have a Ferrari, a Lamborghini? Cause they’re in the same price bracket, basically. I think C7 is going to be that. I love C8. I do think she’s a little ugly, but I see good things happening.

I think Chevrolet will clean up C8.

Crew Chief Eric: Here we are. We don’t know what the future holds. Nobody has a crystal ball. The C8 is still an infant. They’ve been making changes. They’ve been fixing recalls, different wheels, different packages, paint schemes. You know, they have the IMSA C8. R edition, which has nothing to do with the actual C8 R, you know, you’ve got the E Ray, you’ve got some other stuff, blah, blah, blah.

Mark Shank: I think the advice we haven’t given the Corvette sells insufficient bump, particularly, you know, the C5 and it’s done really pretty well for itself in [01:39:00] the last 20 odd years. There are enough people out there for whom it is their dream car. It’s the last car they ever want to buy. Last fun car they ever want to buy.

And so they just dropped so much money in it that they’re never going to get back. And so I think if I’m really giving advice to somebody on this, if I were to do it, be really patient, it might take you two or three years to find the right vet, but be patient, know what you’re looking for. Don’t be afraid to transact and you probably will have to let a few get away that a year later, you’re kind of like, I should’ve bought that.

Why didn’t I buy that? I was so dumb. But then the next time something like that comes around, you have the courage to pull the trigger and not wait. Cause there’s always a little bit of FOMO in that game of, but what if I find something else six months from now, 12 months from now, the thing that brought it home to me, just looking through these transactions is apparently one of my jobs on this podcast is to reference bad data.

Is this C5 06 that sold a few months ago and bring a trailer for 25K. This guy has so many mods on it. It’s all [01:40:00] supercharged and just built out suspension and everything. It’s like, this guy spent so much money on this stupid car and it doesn’t sell for any more than any other Z06 that’s being sold. You added 0 in value to that car in spite of everything that you dumped in it.

And if you just kind of have the patience, if that’s what you want, you know, maybe you don’t want to deal with it. You want a track car and you don’t want a super truck. Okay, fine. But even then you could look for somebody who really spent the money on the suspension and spent the money to get it set up, right.

Because it is in volume. It is such a dream car. It’s not like a BMW M3, which sells in good volume. It’s kind of like you’re a successful executive and you have kids and you want something that’s kind of fast. You get an M3. Like no, the Corvette is end game. So many people. And because it’s their end game, they’re not afraid of putting money into it.

Cause they’re gonna drive it until their hip goes out and they can’t shift gears. It’s this dichotomous advice of don’t be afraid to wait, but when you find something, don’t be afraid to pull the trigger. And that is the needle you have to thread for yourself.

Crew Chief Eric: But it comes down to this, because this is what should I buy.

And let’s say you have 100, 000 to [01:41:00] spend. Do you buy a C8? Or all things being equal, taking the extremes off the table, like the LT1, like the ZR1s, like some of the split window stingrays and things like that. And you’re just kind of looking at Corvette and you got a hundred grand to spend. Do you buy new or do you buy old?

And if you buy old, what do you buy?

Rob Parr: I would probably seriously consider a C7 ZR1 if no money was no object. Price has gone way through the roof on those. They’re selling for more than they cost when they were new.

Don Weberg: You know, it’s such a gamut. You’ve got a hundred thousand dollars to spend. You want a daily driver.

Well, I’ll tell you the C5 is sort of the bastard child of all of them. But that one night in Malibu.

Oh God.

Don Weberg: No, seriously. If you’re just looking for a daily driver to go back and forth to work in, the C5 is fantastic. I mean, it is really a fantastic car, but that said, you got a hundred grand. Got a little bit more money to play with.

Is it worth getting a C8? Honestly, I, I don’t know. I don’t know. Is it daily driver friendly? Let me throw that out there. And Eric, you’ve heard me make this argument before when it comes to certain other cars that [01:42:00] are two seats with nothing behind it. There’s nowhere to put your stuff in a C8. There’s nowhere.

You’ve got to put it in the little cubby holes and whatever and hope to God you don’t have too much stuff. A C7? Well, you’ve got a station wagon’s rear end. You just throw it over your shoulder, you’re done. Uh, even with The convertible, you’ve still got that area behind you. You’ve got a lot of space. So in terms of daily driver, I think your C7, C6, C5, I don’t know if I want to go C4.

All of those, I think would be much, much more forgiving, much more enjoyable, much more practical daily drivers than a C8.

Mark Shank: One of the things I like so much about the Corvette platform is there are so many really great cars for less than a hundred thousand dollars. So that’s my first. Kind of reactions to our quick take.

So, okay, I’m going to spend a hundred grand, you know, number one, this is what should I buy? So for C1, I will go with the 1962, three 27 black silver cove red interior. If anyone listening is curious, but I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love a C4. I feel like the C4 made Corvette cool. Again, the C3 [01:43:00] was so long in the tooth.

And if you look back at the press from the eighties, The C4 was a big deal, but the C2 was certainly the golden age. I would totally agree. You know, I’m probably on the hunt for a ZR1, a C6, C7. I’m going to spend a hundred grand. Might be hard to find the right one. ZR1. But yeah, I would probably try and be patient and hope the economy continues to kind of be a little weak and not impact me personally so that I can pick one for a hundred grand.

Because I think that makes a lot of sense. Having said that, if I’m really struggling to find a ZR1 for a hundred K, Man, I would be so tempted to do something foolish with a C seven zero six. I wouldn’t pay a hundred K to get it, but I could end up spending that money to get it to something being really silly.

You’re not going to get that money back. At least not till the market changes a bit. You could build one of those Texas mile car. You could do 150 mile an hour roll on car. Like you could do so many silly, silly things with that

Crew Chief Eric: platform. William, it’s not big money, but it’s six figures.

William Ross: This is my daily driving and I got to spend the whole [01:44:00] hundred grand on just the one car.

I’d buy the C8, you know, the technology’s there, the comfort’s there, everything’s there. You can have fun with it. I mean, it can do a lot, wear a lot of different hats. If that’s what you have to use, it’s not going to kill you. It’s not going to beat the shit out of you. You know, if you get a C5, I mean, you’re going to buy a 6 speed, you know, those clutches are kind of heavy and then dealing with that fucking shift skip shit.

Crew Chief Eric: I forgot about that. Oh my God.

William Ross: That was always a trick I had my C4, too, was either rev it up a little higher, so you delete it out or whatever. But yeah, I would just. It’s annoying, but you know, Hey, you got the a hundred grand buy a really nice C6 and then spend some extra money, buy a beat up C5 and turn into a race car, buy a bunch of stuff.

But you got to buy the one for a hundred grand. It’d be a C8. Rick, what do you think?

Rick Hoback: I don’t speak daily driver very well. I prefer driving race cars as daily drivers and the a hundred thousand dollar price points a little tough because I think you’re right. I think if you have a hundred grand, you just buy the newest, latest and greatest, the C8.

Probably.

Crew Chief Eric: Maybe. Sort of. Yeah.

Rick Hoback: [01:45:00] I can’t daily driver in my head. I can’t compute that. Does not compute. What I’m hoping happens, and it’s more than 100 grand, I’m hoping they make a 900 horsepower ZR1C8. For me, that checks every box for me. It checks a warranty. It checks enough horsepower to keep me satisfied.

It checks a lot of boxes. The technology would be there and I don’t have to modify it.

William Ross: Wider front tires too.

Rick Hoback: Yeah. Wider front tires. The ZR1 would definitely have wider front tires if they followed the same format they always have. And you can’t talk C2 and 3 as daily driver. I think I would, I don’t know, daily driver’s gotta be C8.

I think you almost have to rephrase that question. Like, what would you do with your 100 grand for overall? Then it gets really complicated because then I’m looking at C2s.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re used to doing this on What Should I Buy? So we go a little offensive. So I’m with you. I’m right there with you. And so here’s what I’m thinking.

There’s a lot of things I will put up with and I won’t put up with. And inside of the construct of daily is, yeah, I got to take it to work. Maybe I have a backup car, [01:46:00] probably not going to drive in the winter. I’ll have a second car, but I want to go to the cars and coffee. I want to take my wife to the ice cream parlor.

You know, those kinds of things. Like you’re going to use it. It’s not going to sit. In a mausoleum somewhere, not a museum in a mausoleum, dying a decrepit death, disintegrating on a garage floor. I want to drive this car. That’s what I mean, what we’ve always meant by that daily car. Right? And so I look at it two ways.

If I’m going to go modern C7 all day, Z06. Done deal C7 in that charcoal gun, metal pewter, whatever you want to call that gray that it came. Oh, it’s gorgeous, right? With the right set of wheels all day long, but I got a hundred grand to spend and I want a Corvette that I’m going to call my own. That’s going to be different.

Maybe have some money left over. I actually think after all this, I’m going to buy a C3 and I’m going to restomod it, put some wheels on it, lower it, side pipes, fenders, just do it upright. And I think I could make a C3. A really cool air quotes daily driver something I could take to work something I could cruise down the [01:47:00] highway I could do a mountain run with it.

I could go to cars and coffee. I could go get ice cream with my daughter I think I could go either way vintage or modern and there’s probably money left over at either end of that discussion

Mark Shank: Yeah, i’m feeling you I’m feeling I like that answer. It’s probably better than mine because the c3 also just it gets so little love So it would be so awesome to see one that was just done really really well And that somebody really just put their money and passion into to turn something that’s worth it when you know what you’re looking at and you walk up to a car and you just see the little things right and you’re Just kind of like man that guy loves that car.

I hope he you’re not going but like I don’t I don’t mean it It was like maybe he’s gonna have a heart attack next week. I can buy it from the sprinter

Crew Chief Eric: Right on, brother. That’s what I’m talking about. Real quick shout out to the International Motor Racing Research Center who sponsored this episode. And by the way, you have the opportunity to win a brand new C8 Corvette.

You can enter their sweepstakes by visiting racingarchives. org and then clicking on sweepstakes in the top right corner where you can be entered to win a 2024 [01:48:00] C8 Corvette. C8 Z06 with the Z07 add on package. And if you don’t want the Vette, there is always a cash option and the proceeds do benefit the IMRRC Upper Watkins Glen.

Don Weberg: If you’re looking to add a classic Corvette or Porsche to your collection, then reach out to William at exoticcarmarketplace. com. Learn more about local events and shows where you can meet other Corvette owners by touching base with Rob over at collectorcarguide. net. And if you want help building a Corvette for all sorts of occasions, look no further than Rick at Hoback Racing.

And you’re guaranteed to catch Mark and myself on another coming episode. So stay tuned for that. And don’t forget what should be in your garage Corvette. Thanks again to our panel for another great, what should I buy debate?

Crew Chief Eric: Like we mentioned in the introduction, this is part one of two. Next time we’re going to talk Porsche versus Corvette and go through the generations of 911.

I hope you enjoyed this. There’s a lot to educate yourself on in the world of [01:49:00] Corvette. I think you can go down rabbit holes on every generation. You got eight generations. Pick from just some amazing stuff out there. Absolutely amazing cars. If you haven’t considered a Corvette before, I think more people should be looking at them.

There’s a lot of really, really great deals out there. And with that guys can’t thank you enough for joining us again and look forward to seeing you in the next. What should I buy?

Rob Parr: I’m going to take off, but I appreciate your including me. And if you do a sequel to this, I’m happy to be a board.

Don Weberg: Thanks guys.

Thanks. Good to meet you, Rick. Take care of guys.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social [01:50:00] media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to the Debate
• 00:19 Porsche vs. Corvette Rivalry
• 00:56 Meet the Panelists
• 02:02 History of the Corvette C1
• 08:35 Collectibility and Market Trends of the C1
• 11:24 Transition to the C2
• 12:01 Design and Performance of the C2
• 21:33 Collector Market for the C2
• 26:07 Introduction to the C3
• 39:10 Exploring the C3 Corvette Market
• 39:46 Modifying the C3: Aftermarket Options
• 42:15 Trans Am vs. Corvette: A Value Comparison
• 44:01 The Missing 1983 Corvette and the Rise of the C4
• 45:07 C4 Corvette: Versatility and Market Value
• 52:31 C5 Corvette: Evolution and Track Performance
• 01:10:01 C6 Corvette: Design and Market Trends
• 01:15:07 The LS3 Engine Update and Magneto Suspension
• 01:16:23 Grand Sport Market Trends
• 01:18:52 C7 Corvette: A Design Departure
• 01:21:37 C8 Corvette: The Mid-Engine Revolution
• 01:25:32 Corvette’s Evolution and Market Value
• 01:40:54 Daily Driver Debate: C7 vs. C8
• 01:47:41 Conclusion and Future Episodes

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