First off, a little bit about me.
I would like to say that I have wanted a Corvette all my life, and I have just been yearning for the time when that might come to pass. Actually nothing would be further from the truth. I was perfectly happy with the occasional purchase of completely mundane and utilitarian vehicles. The last several vehicles I have owed have been a Chevrolet Z71 Silverado (actually my wife's truck), a '99 Chevy Astro van, '98 Jeep Wrangler, and '83 full sized Ford Bronco. Only the Bronco is not with me today. So as you can see, basically work horse type vehicles, and nothing at all that would stand out in a crowded parking lot. Actually, it wouldn't even have to be crowded. They STILL wouldn't stand out here in north Florida.
Speaking of which, I actually live in Crawfordville, FL, which is a speck of a town between Tallahassee and the Gulf of Mexico along route 319. Been living here since '91 after moving out of Maryland to get away from the crowds and the politically uncomfortable local government there.
Anyway, back to how I came to become infected with the Corvette fever. Just over a year ago, at Christmas time, a good friend of ours (Dave) had his wife pass away from cancer. Of course, Jane was our friend too, so I hope this doesn't make it sound like we were strangers. Well long story short is that Dave went to a local Chevrolet dealership to sell his wife's car there, because he couldn't bear to have it sitting in the driveway any longer. On the way out, with check in hand, he got snagged by rather GOOD salesman who literally dragged him over to show him a used '00 C5 Corvette that they just got in. Dave was feeling rather low, and understandbly so, so he was easy pickings for the salesman. And he found himself driving home that vette rather then trying to find a way home via another method.
Well Dave sent me some photos of his silver C5 convertible, and although I thought it was nice, it really wasn't my thing. I liked my Jeep just fine, and it certainly got me where I wanted to go. I showed my wife (Connie) the photos of Dave's corvette and commented that he was probably going through a rather severe mid-life crisis right about now. So really just jokingly (heck I'm 55 years old myself right now) I commented that maybe I should get a vette myself for my own mid-life crisis. Fully expecting Connie to say something like "Go ahead, make a damn fool out of yourself.." or something like that, I have to admit I was rather shocked when she said "Sure! As long as you let me drive it!". Huh??
Well I'm not sure exactly when or why, but suddenly I started thinking SERIOUSLY about this idea. Hell, I've never even been a passenger in a Corvette, so what the heck do I know about them? I remember back in my '66 GTO days, that the Corvette Stingray was about the ultimate kid fantasy wheels. I was 19 at the time, and into the high performance mods, but heck, it was ONLY a GTO, and not even in the same class as a Corvette. Not even close. So all of a sudden, something just consumed me. Well damn! There really wasn't a reason in the world why I couldn't buy a Corvette. Except money, of course. I'm not wealthy, but I'm doing fairly OK. Could I REALLY afford something like this?
At that point, I had no idea of the prices, so I started looking around. Well, prices were all over the map. Fortunately this was late in August and early September, so it appeared that prices on Corvettes were cooling down because of a seasonal slow down in sales because of the coming winter months. Honestly, I originally thought I wanted one of those old Stingray Corvettes like I remembered as a kid. But when I took a look at the prices of ones worth having to drive, that changed my mind pretty quickly. And almost ended the idea of getting a Corvette right then and there. I thought "Man, if those old ones are this pricey, what the heck are newer ones selling for?"
Well, not to drag this out much longer, I found a 2002 Electron Blue Z06 that a guy had down in south Florida. Price was better then I expected, but the tradeoff was that it was definitely a daily driver for someone, and was not particularly babied. Had 58K or so miles on it, and it's fair share of rock chips on the hood and front bumper. Also needed tires, and come to find out that the wheels were off of a regular C5 and not a Z06, so yeah, my inexperience got me burned a little bit. But honestly, if the car had been perfect yet more expensive I probably would have shelved the idea. After reading about the C5 I had pretty much made up my mind that that was the one I wanted. And with the number of times I saw things advertised like "add this to your C5 to make it perform like a Z06", it became obvious that the Z06 was the
ONE to get.
So now that I have my own Corvette, I am astonished. Literally. How come I never even thought of buying one before? The car is AMAZING to drive! And beautiful beyond words. You know, I will be honest here, when looking at advertisements for Corvettes, I would laugh out loud reading people saying things like "My Corvette has NEVER been in the rain." I was thinking, "Sheesh! That guy should see my Jeep. It has moss growing on the passenger side because that is the north side of it. I washed it every couple of years, and it lived outside under the pine trees. So I figured when I got my Corvette, it would be living outside as well. Well, not so. The wife had been asking for a car port (actually a garage, but maybe next year...) for her Silverado, and I had been saying we would look at one in due time. So now, all of a sudden, DUE TIME showed up in a hurry. Unfortunately car ports don't really do much about horizontal rain and dust. So I also have a cover on the Corvette as well as being under the car port. And I have to confess that I check the weather on days when I think I may take it out for a spin. Once when I had it out for a drive, some maniac actually had his lawn sprinkler set improperly and my vette actually got WET on a perfectly sunny day! Certainly grounds for justifiable homicide, I would think. But I needed to get back home in a hurry, because I was now infected with dreaded
water spots and had to do something quick. So yeah, my laughing at other Corvette owners certainly came back to haunt me. In my ignorance, I didn't have a clue about what it meant to have a Corvette.
In real life, I breed reptiles for a living. Yeah, odd, I know. Prior to that I worked for the State of Florida as a computer programmer, both for the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission and for the Legislature. But after doing both the reptile business and the state job concurrently, I just got tired of it and decided to choose one over the other. Still not sure it was the RIGHT decision, but so far I haven't starved, so I must be doing something right.
Rich Z
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