Please GM, Fix the Corvette



By The Mechanic | October 12, 2009

This semi-regular column is written (in his own blood) by an automotive sage and noted malcontent, known as The Mechanic. Mercilessly beaten as a child with rolled-up back issues of old car magazines, our free-spoken hero developed a unique "for your own good" take on cars and the auto industry, along with an unfortunate habit of setting himself ablaze. Later, after a distinguished career as an automotive journalist and magazine editor, he cast off the reins of his musty oppressors, carved out his superego with a plastic spork and became The Mechanic.

Before I begin, let me say that the following is not an attack on the people who buy Corvettes. They are good, clean, patriotic car lovers, and I think they should all be applauded for buying American.

I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Every barrel-chested baldy (sorry, retirees) and stripper (sorry, Bambi) who bought a Corvette recently deserves our respect and admiration for spending their hard-earned cash on America's sports car. God bless them all. I hope they enjoy their cars.

This column is not about them. It's about the Corvette itself, which sucks.

Truth is, I'm not really sure when it began to suck. I must have been watching my new Girls Gone Wild DVD and missed it, but it does suck and I think we should all be mortified by its suckiness.

Sure it performs incredibly well, but the Corvette as a relevant performance car has lost its way. Instead of being the everyman, all-American supercar it once was, the Vette has become too expensive, too extreme and too cheesy.

Chevy has blown it by allowing the Corvette's price and performance to get out of hand. And it continues to wrap the Vette in a dated package that is driving America's young car enthusiasts elsewhere. Do you realize that the base price of a new 2010 Corvette is $48,940? That's 50 grand for the cheapest Vette Chevy will sell you. The days of a kid graduating from college, getting a good job, saving up and buying a new Vette are long gone.

This is a problem.

But price is only part of the Corvette's demise. The sports car's image is another issue. Maybe it was all those butt-ugly Indy pace car editions over the years, or maybe it's the chrome wheels on the ZR1, but the Corvette's image is now more hillbilly than Beverly Hills, more Vegas than Victory Lane.

And it might be too late to save it. From where I sit, the Corvette has already been displaced as the attainable dream car for America's youth: displaced by the Infiniti G35 Coupe and the BMW M3 (E46). These two cars (and now their succeeding models, the G37 Coupe and the BMW M3 (E92)) are what the kids desire and aspire to. They've become "the Corvette" for the next generation of enthusiasts that have not yet hit the big four-o.

Sure they're slower than a C6, but they represent a far more modern and upscale interpretation of the everyday performance car. They represent what today's car lover wants: speed, style, quality and a nameplate that says he's successful and he knows what's cool. The Corvette just goes fast.

But these days everything goes fast. Guys realize they don't really need a car any faster than an E46 M3, which runs low 13s in the quarter-mile. Sure the C6 runs 12s but nobody really cares. These days, guys want a more balanced package.

And so the Corvette is being squeezed from the bottom by cars like the Infiniti, and it can't really compete with the upscale stuff (Porsche 911) because of its shoddy interior, questionable fit and finish and 1985 profile.

Unfortunate. The Corvette is one fine driving machine. Especially in Z06 and ZR1 trim. But I wouldn't buy one. Not unless I was the richest guy in Bowling Green. Or I owned a few Chevy dealerships. Or I was a stripper in Bowling Green and my sugar daddy owned a few Chevy dealerships. Otherwise I would ward off the Corvette like a sober night of karaoke, and I would do what every other well-educated cultured gentleman with taste and money does. I'd buy myself a Porsche 911. Make it a GT3.

And now to make matters worse, there's the Corvette Grand Sport, a new model recently reviewed by the great Dan Pund on this very Web site. It's basically a standard Vette that looks like a Z06. Market research must have showed GM's product planners that there's an untapped poser market. A big block of gold chainers clamoring for a slower, cheaper, inauthentic version of the Z06.

Come on, Chevy. Stop going in the wrong direction. Nobody ever asked you to make the Corvette the fastest car you could buy or the fastest car for the money. Nobody needs the Corvette to win Le Mans or pack 600-plus horsepower and cost over $100,000. Of course we want it to perform well, but we also need it to be affordable, insurable and durable. And we want it to be cool.

And today the C6 Corvette just isn't cool.

Come on GM, give us a Corvette we the people want today, not the Corvette you thought we wanted in 1989. -- The Mechanic, Inside Line Contributor

 

Hmm, maybe they forgot about the Camaro, the 'Vette for everyone?
And a Vette was never cheap..

And he rants about the profile from Vette being from 1985, while thinking that a 911 from the 1950s looks better?

 

He is bitter, exaggerates, and has a chip on his shoulder but there are a couple points in there that are valid. In no way does the corvette suck though, but it has lost it's roots in a sense.


Wrong, corvette's used to be very affordable. There is a scale called the "corvette scale" that the maritime industry used to go by at the negotiating table in the late 70's and early 80's. They used corvette pricing to ballpark where the contract negotiations began as the corvette used to be the blue collar worker's car. I only wish we could still use that scale but the corvette has far outpaced COLA to where it is no longer a blue collar car but a white collar one.

 

This guy has an opinion but he is wrong on nearly every count. Just becasue this douche is published does not make his opinion right or accurate.

 

i dont agree with this guy.. on most accounts.. although base C6's have gotten a bit bland, it seems like he missed the big picture of the ZR1 and the Grand Sport.

 

post this on a mustang board and you might get the responses you want. this is ls1tech, we like vettes

 

The whole affordable 'Vette thing made more sense back in the day when the Camaro was built primarily for straight lines and the Corvette was the only American sport car out there. If you wanted straightline power you got a Camaro, if you wanted to play in the twisties you got the Corvette.

These days it seems like all the fast cars are 'Ring tuned and have cornering in mind, so a cheap Corvette would just compete with Camaro since they wouldn't be all that different. So you have to seperate them out so they don't compete, so the Camaro ended up as the cheaper one while the Corvette is the more expensive one.

Right now a baseline Corvette really isn't insanely pricey, although I will agree that GM is going overboard with all the special editions. Z06 and ZR1 made sense, a N/A special addition and a F/I special edition. This Grand Sport seems to kind of be overkill. The entire Porsche over a Corvette thing is a personal thing, but I fail to see how you can fault GM for trying to compete in various levels.

I think overall the problem with the high performance market is that most stuff made tends to be fully loaded. Its getting harder to find a cheap, powerful V8 that isn't loaded down with options and frills. Weights are going up, as are the prices.

 

^true, it would be amazing to buy a vette w/ no power windows, doorlocks, cruise control, HUD, no leather w/ optional rear gear ratios that are more aggressive than stock.

 

Well, "The Mechanic" needs to be whacked upside his scull with my 3/4" drive torque wrench to get him back to reality. Too extreme? In what way? Certainly not driveability and opinions on appearance are like...you know. Price a problem? How about the used segment for struggling buyers? C5Zs and even alot of used C6s can be had for less than half of original sticker with durability that is well proven now. Oh, and good luck buying a new 911 for 50k.

 

i would like to know what kid would pick a G37 or an m3 over a vette

 

this guy is a moron and a half the vette is still the sports car that most people in reality aspire to, and quite frankly talk about the balding retirees they are the only boring guys driving the porsches these days, i love the vette for its performance and its affordability for its best bang for the buck category as rated tops by every magazine. this guy is probably a fat bitter old man who has never gotten any dirt under his nails, and then again he is a writer so hes never worked for a living so what else would you expect.....

 

oh yeah im 34, duly employed make nearly 100k and still drive my ta and cant wait to get a vette., whatever ***
and all my buddies that do quite well cant wait to get a vette or a new camaro, none of us even talk about porsches casue we couldnt afford a new one, and would not want to pay the upkeep on a used one......talk about affordability, what a *****, he really pissed me off with this article. this typifies the problem with america today, ooh look i have a bmr or a lex or a benz but i rent an apartment have crazy credit card debt, and have that lease.....instead of appreciating the affordable quality we have here to buy....morons.

 

First he makes excuses for the m3 and g37's power disadvantage. Then he calls the Grand Sport a poser Vette because it does not have the extra power of the z06 which I thought was unnecessary. Idiot.

On a related note I was at E-town today, and if he thinks 13 second quarter mile times are fast enough then he better be happy being outrun by 99% of the cars there.

 

He is right that the Corvette is no longer affordable to most nor really cool. Too many badge jobs make it into a joke for most ppl that, unlike us, do not love these cars in a manner best described as cult-like. I can see what he means...I like the C6, but I can see this man saying the Corvette is not what it used to be.

W

 

Thank God they are not what they used to be. The C5 and C6 are far better in every way compared to previous generations. I do like the styling of some of the 60's and early 70's Vettes but that is about it.

 

The writer of this article must of been hit with toooo many hot rod magazines in his head as a kid for sure. ::rolls eyes::

The Corvette is still affordable and a good deal for the people looking at purchasing a car in that level of performance.

If you are so concerned about every little penny THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU GETTING A CORVETTE??????????????

 

i love vettes, my dad had a 72 w/ 454 and 4 speed, nice lopey cam and that thing would shred tires every gear. never took it to the track though

 

I agree.
The C5 and C6 are definitely the best Corvettes ever made, and most certainly the C5 put the Corvette into a completely different class performance-wise over the previous generations. But I will tell you this; my mom had a '94 LT1 automatic (bleh, automatic) when I was in high school, and has an '01 Z51 6spd (gotta love 3 pedals) currently. And while I absolutely LOVE trading cars with her for a week now, the C4 seems like more of a "Corvette" to me. The C5 is a "better" car in basically every aspect, but I still for an intangible reason prefer the brashness and audacity of the C4s. Gimme an Admiral Blue LT4 with the red/black interior please

 

lol when he says "But these days everything goes fast. Guys realize they don't really need a car any faster than an E46 M3, which runs low 13s in the quarter-mile. Sure the C6 runs 12s but nobody really cares. These days, guys want a more balanced package." ..****** idiot. Prob. drives a yaris for ***** sake and he dares to speak about what people want in performance cars..

 

+1

seems to have struck a cord with a few people haha