Should I get a new C7 Corvette?

Good descripion of a C5, I own one too, and never considered it beautiful... I think that it always looked a bit like a dachshund, but the heat lamp is a good analogy too.. It just kinda sagged in the middle... And the back end was always bigger than Bertha Butts too.. A C4 will always look good, the basic proportions are there...

 

The second version of the C5 with the firmer air vent in the fender instead of the multi folded one, is on of my Fav 'Vettes. They do not fail to catch my eye when I see one on the road. I will admit the "retro" looking rear of the C6 is better, I prefer the pop up head light look on the front of the C5. Both are pretty close IMHO. The C6 ZR1 with its added froopah to the body looks more of super car than race car, wouldn't say its better looking, wouldn't say its worse, just more aggressive.

I am surprised at the bringing back the Sting Ray name for the C7, as the C6 is more like the Sting Ray. The C7 would have more in common with the Mako Shark if you squashed the width.

Honestly, all the 'vettes aside from the Mako Sharks with slapped on extra huge bumpers are good looking cars. Simply due to deteriorating condition or lack of care, some C4's and C3's don't look as good on the street, but with a caring owner they would.

 

Thing is C3 and C4 are rattletraps. I suppose a C3 is realitvely easy to rebuild. A C4 can be well cared for, but it was never put togther that great, or that stiff, they just dont really hold up. Shape wise I think the C4 is the most classy, everything hangs togther and is in proportion.

The back of the C5 looks like it was a different car grafted into the front, like two different cars sawn in the middle and glued together.

C6 is in that sense a big improvement. C6 to me looks great from 10 feet, but its really a plastic fantastic. The interior is rent car sub par and the shutlines in general are atrocious.

i remmebr on top gear episode filmend here. I think one of them had a Gt3 and Clarkson had a Vette, by the time they went from the west coat to Bonneville the Vette was self destructing bodywise. The other cars int he test were still solid, which i think speaks volumes about what ails the vette, regardless of its performance merits.

 

Just give it a rest. You have a constant hard on against GM-we get it. Your dream build is some old Corolla or a new Hyundai-we get it. You have sat in or claimed to have driven some miles in friends Corvettes to justify your nonsensical posts-we get it. Now you agree with some wanker from the UK and his anecdotal claims about C6 build quality-we get it.

Bottom line-you have no idea what you are talking about. I own(and have owned) a number of Corvettes. My C6 Z06 is as solid as the day it was built. The shut lines are good, the interior works very well for its intended purpose as a sportscar-not a mobile hotspot. All the gauges are easy to read, the HUD is helpful, the controls fall easily to hand and everything works well. I upgraded the seats as I track the car. The LS7 is probably one of the greatest engines ever built. Light, powerful, responsive and incredibly robust it really doesn't have much difficulty showing its heels to any of the so-called superior vehicles you cite on an annoyingly regular basis.
Yeah, my F-cars have higher end interiors-so what? With 5 times the budget, I'd hope so.
As to Porsche setting the quality bar-some of their lower priced interiors over the last decade have been far from impressive.

 

Hey, it's a tribute to the Corvette how much traffic this thread has generated, that is for sure.

 

I have owned several vettes and GM cars. GM istelf admits to its cars faults, so I guess you are in a universe of your own. I have no recollection of ever saying I wanted to build some corolla, I doid admire the build mid 80's. Your string tresponse to my balanced approcah indicates an inecurity about what you drive,

As to GM products, rented an escalade, any company that seriously puts that product out as anything should go pout of bsusiness. Seriously 80K for a tahoe with plastic appliques, and it drove like crap. But then there is no accounting for knowledge and taste because the escalde is a big seller.

GM itself says it has yet to move from just good enough to clasas leader. People like you who make excuses for their products as opposed to demanding world calss products are part of the reason the company failed to evolve, you know the dumb consumer who would buy anyway.

Yes the C6 looks great, Yes its subejective performance numbers are in the top leaugue, yes its interior is crap, and the shutlines are mebarrasing.

 

Think of it this way, a vette is like a Glock it functions great, but for shooting it does not really compare to a colt 45 or browning hi power.

 

Boxerman:

I think a few keys are missing from your keyboard.

 

It is also ironic that the most balanced comments seem to come from owners. Who knew fat, middle-aged guys with gold chains and comb-overs could have such objectivity?

 

Or wear rose colored glasses?

 

I don't know after owning over 250 cars (and taking most of them apart and rebuilding them) you learn a few things sonny! LOL.The vette is not perfect (though nothing better for the money) but either is anything else out there and I have a bit of experience and age (though I have 32" waist and no gold chains) to back that up.

 

I get it the pinacle of your life is driving a vette, and any comentary not positive is a personal affront to you.


If Hyundai can build a genesis with great quality I am sure Gm can do the same with the vette, that they have not done so to date speaks worlds about GM.

Let see if the C7 has moved the game on an eradicated the glaring faults as they claim. In which case the vette will be one of the few real drivers cars left to buy. I know I am in the market.

 

A 32 waist, whats the secret?

 

I haven't had a 32" waist since my freshman year of college!

 

I refrained from comment until I had a little time for my first reaction to the design of the C7 to pass and I had some time for some "sober second thought".

On reflection, it seems that Chevrolet has decided it needs to attract a younger buyer to Corvette, and has decided that moving to an "edgier" style is they way to do so. Given that these are still not inexpensive cars, it will be interesting to see if there are enough of those younger buyers with the cash to support sales after the first year's rush.

I far prefer the simplicity of the current C6.


There are some aspects of the car that I find quite nice on their own but as a whole, I think there's far too much going on here to make the overall design cohesive. Some photos I've seen of the interior look OK, but the one on p1 of this thread with the green dash cover, tan seats, black and carbon display is really truly dreadful.
It's hard to imagine a time when these cars will be looked back upon with the same admiration as the '63-'67 Sting Rays are today.


This thing might be dynamite dynamically, but I really can't drive blindfolded.


Luke Skywalker, your car is ready...

 

I don't believe you are in the market for a C7, actually. The superlatives you throw around about how dreadful the C6 is make no sense to me. You'd think the Corvette was the Beverly Hillbillies' jalopy to read your posts and that a Hyundai Genesis is hewn of solid granite by Michelangelo himself in comparison. By the tenor and vitriol of your posts I really think you are prejudiced and would never consider a C6 or C7 and will justify it with all manner of subjective hyperbole.

Like the Glock comment - huh? It is accurate and reliable (of course I have one, figures plastic car, plastic weapon). I am not sure what else I want in a weapon.

I don't know why I rise to the bait of your comment, but I really am not very brand loyal and the Corvette is not really a "pinnacle" vehicle. I do think the C6Z06 is simply amazing, all things considered. It is lighter and more powerful than most Ferraris and I actually think the materials, while more plebian than Ferrari, are better quality. You have to use a 458 (or maybe 599) to outrun a C6Z06 on track and it won't be by a wide margin (driver disparity could flip-flop the results easily). It's just a great car that has decent looks, great reliability, and the cost to buy and operate it takes a huge mental load off compared to driving a F car with comparable performance.

Finally, it is mind-boggling to me that any F-car owner would put up with sticky switch covers, wrinkling center console parts and shrinking dashes (512BBs may not do all of these, but I suspect they have their signifcant flaws) AND call out GM for interior quality.

Oh, and I could not resist but it looks like you had or have an Elise. Talk about rattles, poor shutlines, and a cornucopia of hard plastic crap in the interior! But it is a LOTUS and the driving dynamics and light weight make putting up with the junkiness worthwhile. So you bought one! Yet you have the temerity to call out the C6Z06 as crappy (and do so purely subjectively). I have to call hypocrisy.

I have an Elise, too and simply love it after 8 years of ownership, but the Z06 does almost everything better and if forced to have only one, regretfully the Elise would have to go.

 

But of course!

 

Yes the lotus has all the faults you mentioned, but as you know it drives great and that covers a multitude of sins. A lotus is also a cottage industry product, for many years an elise/exige was their only product and made in the hundreds. Lotus therefore has the excuse of practicaly zero budget and near superlative driving manners which cover the multitude of its sins for me.

A vette may be better built than a lotus, it may even be tough and durable, but its really not well made, and whilke a c6 looks great its inerior is uninspired to insipid. GM is a multibillion dollar corporation with ample resources, it could and should do better. You might say that the vette is a minor product for them, but they do sell more vettes than say porche boxters which are well built, and GM holds the vette out as its halo product, so that says a lot about the state and mentality of the corporation.

Let me ask you if you took the greatest industrial corporation in the world and pretty nuch drove it into the ground with crappy products and wasted billions developing things no one really wanted and that were years behing the competition, surely that indicates excessive hubris and incompetance.

In the same period VW following essentialy the GM business model of platform sharing(but with real differetiation)has grown from strength to strength, and dont tell me about labor costs, VW employs 30% more people than GM and builds less cars. The key difference as I see it is VW is run by car people who know and understand the product. GM is still run by MBA's, they are alkways looking to how to do it cheaper not better.

So yes a corvette could be superlative if the team designing it was actualy allowed to do its job and give a relatively free reign.

When I visited the lotus factory I asked them what life was like under GM, they told me one story which said it all. GM wanted to know what torque figures lotus used for steering feel. They wanted to spec steering feel, because none of them actualy knew what it was or had a way of replicating it. Those few at GM who did have an idea about steering feel had to have a spec too because there was no other way to get anytrhing passed.

To date the greatest vette in period was the C2 a product of Zora. The whole story is Zora fighting the coporation and sneaking things through, thats why the C2 was as good as it was in period. I will bet you at VW Peich pushes them to make cars like the R8 better not worse, and the boss understands a good car.

So the C7 is going to have needless compromises forced upon it by the corporate culture, or idiotic cost savings which harm product preception. But the coproration thinks the consumer wont notice. the past 30 years of market slide would indicate the consumer is not as dumb as the MBA's at GM believe.

My point about the mid 80's celica was by then toyota was mimicking the best of what the germans did. How long did it take GM to make a wiper stalk that did not feel like scratchy plastic that was about to break. And dont think that all these foibles have been eradicated from current Gm products because they have not.

If the C7 is good it will be a testament to the team that built it, in spite of what they had to go through on a corporate level, which is pretty sad, and means the product will not be as good as it could be...

15 years ago they were talking about spinning corvette off into a seperate brand. Porche which started as a one model car line is now a full fledged automaker. Corvette is still one product.

As to ferrari, I have never said anything about great build of well put together interiors. What a ferrari inerior feels is luxurious and special. Certainly a Boxer inerior is very fragile.
But a Boxer is a great driving experience, even though the car is not really daily useable and there is no real AC, So owning a Boxer is an affectation and an indugence, it is a product of cottage indsutry italy and that is what gives it flavor.

The newer ferraris are to me boring to drive, except on the track, and driving them on the track is financialy ruinous, so they are really trinkets, or daily's for people who like to show off. But the 458 seems to be very well screwed together, its design is original and cohesive. You will also note that earlier in this thread I said that while the C7 vette may be copying everything in sight, stylewise its a pastche, but its done very well. In fact to my eyes its a far better looker than a F12. I think my words were that if th F12 looked like the vette people would really be swooning, none of which make either car elegant.

The most superlative sports car I have driven is a porche GT3, and I am not a porche person, but it does do everything as it should be done, sounds great and is smooth, feeling solid, and steers like a lotus, to me it is the benchmark.

If in life I had only ever had one sportscar and that was the elise, I would have missed nothing of real substance by not having had or driven any of the others. But as a car, a usable car the elise is not it.

As a daily the best car I own is my Chevy equinox. It drives great, the handling for an SUV is very good its comfortable and the suspension is well resolved. I bought it after trying the competition fro Japan Korea etc. But it too has some glaring flaws that indicate it was built by a copration that really did not understand product and forced the engineers to compromise, and I am not refering to cost issues here.

For every near hit GM has there are still two fails. Even the new small caddy seems to have better synamics than a 3 series, yet they then put comparatively crappy motors in it, WHY?

 

I think you overexagerate everything I say, you also mix comments made by others which you then try attribute to me, all of which indicates a lack of objectivity.

I have never held out alotus to be a thing of build virtue, I dont think I have even mentioned my lotus in this thread, I just happen like the way it drives and the whole concept of a giant slayer, I like the minimalism and its purity of purpose, plus without all the power as a crutch you have to learn how to drive properly. So I spent what a vette would cost an a small pooly put together low power car, because it had viryues that i valued for certain conditions. But no one anywhere cpmares an elise to a vette, As you know vettes like to be copmapred to porches ferraris lambos, audis BMWs. Even if the objective performance numbers are there for a vette(it excells), the subjective experience lacks(as does the new 991) by vettes engineers own admission, and for a mass production item its(C6) build is embarrasing.

As to whther I am in the market for a C7 or not. I dont claim to specificaly be in the market for a C7. I am in the market for a "overpowered car", that has character, is trackable
without breaking the bank every weekend and possibly streetable. But it also has to be able to hold up, have charater, be involving at all speeds, and meld man and machine. If all the hype about the C7 is true its on my list. So far I am leaning more towards a SPF GT40 because I think it will be far more viceral and fun to drive, even if not as ultimatly quick as a C7 ZO6 around a big track. The new Viper is also on the list. I dont do paddle shift computer cars regardless of their track times, to me they are one step away from a keyboard command car.

That essentialy eliminates the new 991 Gt3 and the 458/MP12 would be ruinous to track with any vigor, plus from my drives in them they really were not great fun on the road, too uninvolving. Perhaps if I had an unlimited budget and or were willing to sell something I already have, then a 458 would look different.

To me there are comfortable cars for the road, and trackable cars(lotus Gt3 some vettes vipers GTR). There are also ridiculous cars like the boxer which feel like track cars on the road but cant really be tracked, but they are more fun than others on the right road on the right day with no traffic., and then cars like the M3 which are a bit too hard for the street and really too heavy and underbraked stock for the track, not fully engaging but they can drive like a regular car here and there, while opportunisticaly feeding on open pieces of road as they appear..

Yes there are purely track cars too, but those can really beat you up and require a degree of maintance dedication that requires more time than I currently have to devote to a single pursuit with cars., To me a trackable street type car has a degree of comfort and ease on the track and you can still enjoy on ocassion on the street.

Lastly a trackable street car is in my experience reliable for a season requirng fluids and pads all of which is easily do able at home. Put some slick tires on, take it to the track on a trailer with some spare bits and wheels and the fun ensues. I am still "immature" I like to drive at a pace, and drive a car to its limit and mine, something very hard and dangerous to do on the street, so to me a fast street car such as a vete shoud be involving at all speeds on the road, and very few new cars are.

I raced single seaters for a while years ago, but now do very much enjoy my trackdays for the smooth fast running unhindred by traffic and such, and go to the track as and when my schedule allows. And yes on an early sunday I like to drive those same cars on my favorie roads, sometimes, just like I enjoy riding my bikes sometimes. Its like cloths or food, different ones for different days moods conditions.

I am not looking to win races, I am looking to have fun enjoy and imporve, and yes take another car every now and then, particularily if itds supposedly faster than mine. The fun comes from the driving experience the speed and sometimes the winning, but to me its a whole experience.

What am I in the market for now, something rewarding to drive, that has a lot more go than the lotus, because some tracks like the Glen are just much better with power, and others like LRP are more fun with a lithe car like the lotus which i already have.

So realisticaly for under say 150k something that can occasionaly be driven on the street, but does half its miles on the track, require little more than consumables for a season and is viceral to drive, what is there.

On that basis yes a C7 Vette is def on the list to consider, I dont think the 991 GT3 with paddles will work for me.
None of which means a C6 is well built, because its not, its at best Ok built and Gm could and should do much better, we wil, see if they have with the C7 very soon, but everytime there is a new vette out, the pres goes gaga that this is the ONE that pulls it all together, and so far that has not happened..

Maybe Vttes are targeting people who look for things other than what I look for, to me every car has to have some shining virtues and so far a C6 vettes shining virtue has been objective performance numbers and too little of everything else, like build, quality, engagement, tactility. So lets objectively and subjectively see what the C7 is really about.

 

Name for me a single VW product that has any kind of sporting performance worth owning. I can't think of one. Ever. Even the venerated GTI is a wimpy FWD "hot hatch" that simply cannot compare to the Corvette. And I owned a Jetta TDI Sportwagon. A perfect transportation appliance with no flaws ever that made one routine service visit per year in the 3 years I owned it and remains beloved by the family member who bought it from me. But BORING!

The Corvette has to hit a price point and volume point and so what? Some corners are cut, so that mass production can make the product attainable to those who can't or won't spend bigger money. And the volume makes it less exclusive. But my C6Z06 has been just about as good as my VW was in terms of reliability and fit and finish, only I vastly prefer driving the Z. The VW got replaced by a CTS-V Wagon. I honestly think GM produces some inspired cars aimed at the middle market and they do a good job.

The view from behind the wheel, especially when focused intently on using the performance envelope leaves little time to worry about whether there is leather on the door panels or too many vents on the bodywork.

So I think I do agree with you in that the strongest point of the Z06 is its objective performance. For me, I am willing to forgive a lot based on that alone. You want something more, and I suspect would trade a little performance or pay extra for it. I'd say that puts you in an Audi S series or 911 GT car, both excellent choices.

 

Lets see an Audi R8 is a VW product.

But I think you miss my point herer about VW. I am comparing the company globaly to GM as a company, all its products, from Bently to Seat. VW has followed the Gm playbook of platform sharing but with real brand differentiation, but has made what appear to be quality and desirable products whereas Gm has pretty much sunk its boat in the same timeframe say 75 onwards. In general from a build perspective and a design perspective VW products in their class are consdiered to be tops.

Yes GM produces some inspired cars from time to time. The CTS V is certainly one of them. But the CTS has been around how long? And cadillac which is the flagship brand has rebadged tahoes, the CTs which is now long in tooth, the XTS which even they are not proud of, but is a decent car and the new small one which is another almost there product.

In the luxury game VW has a full range of Audi products, then Bently then Bugatti. GM makes more cars than VW and employs 1/3 less people, so I submit that GM has a lack of managerial talent and still suffers for poor coproate choices. Sadly its a company with some very talented car people mostly run by people who know too little about cars.

As tp price points, last I checked a ZR1 was not exactly cheap. But let me not confuse the issue, a Genesis costs less than a regular vette but has great interior build. For 1K more which wouldhardly turn vette buyers off it could be much better, GM seems to always cut too much in too many obvious places. But I'll give credit where its due, the cometitors to the vette, like the 300zx and supra are long gone and the vette enbdures, so they did something right business wise. But now the comparison is to porche or Nissan GTr maybe new NSX which means they have to up the game on build and overall quality. in fact withut the competition thye should just do it right, whatever you say, these gays a vette is not acheap car, and if a boxter can be built great for the same money so can a vette.

As to how many are out there, thats a good thing, I hate car badge snobs, in theory these things are for driving and impressing onesself not impressing others, thats posing.

 

an ex bodybuilder, weight lifting girlfriend who at 50 makes most 20 year olds jealous. If you google me you'll see her, and 8 year old twin boys!

 

Superlative superlative superlative superlative superlative superlative

 

An R8 is a silly comparison to a Corvette. The base Corvette is affordable and the ZR1 so outperforms the R8 that only a buyer who values comfort over performance picks the R8. And it has to be an R8 V10 to make it even close. GM goes for comparative volume production and affordability with the Corvette and hits the mark. I can go with the GTR but it is a toad and a competent driver will prefer the much lighter Vette.

Give the corporate culture crap a rest. If you care how the sausage is made then god help you.

And you forgot the ATS. I predict the V series version will be amazing.

 

You forgot Duperative