A Corvette offer you just shouldn’t refuse
This is going to be the shortest edition of Avoidable Contact you’ll ever read, and to make it even shorter the second half is optional. Here goes:
Part 1: This is the right time to buy a C7
When times get tough, General Motors has been known to pull a zero-percent rabbit out of the financing hat—but those terms are usually limited to the stuff that’s been on the showroom floor since the final episode of M*A*S*H, and they’re often aimed at the kind of credit criminals who can be talked into buying anything in the Buick showroom if the numbers are right.
Not today. Right now you can get 0 percent over 72 months on C7 Corvette Grand Sports and 0 percent over 84 months on base and Z51 Corvettes. By the time you actually read this, the 84-month deal may be available on the Grand Sport as well. Doing this means you give up a $2000 rebate, but many dealers are still pulling out all the discount stops. I’m seeing base automatic coupes at 51 grand. That’s about the price of a Honda Odyssey Elite. Nothing against Honda Odysseys—they’re fine for growing families—but the only person to ever write a song about them was jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, and he made the song an instrumental because he had nothing interesting to say.
There’s still inventory out there, since Bowling Green just stopped building the C7 in November. If you’d enjoy a Torch Red automatic coupe, you’ll have no trouble finding one… but there are also Grand Sports with manual transmissions to be had. There’s even payment deferral available if you want to hold onto your cash until toilet paper prices drop. What are you waiting for? Go get a Corvette. I’m glad we had this talk.
Part 2: Why would you buy a C7 after the C8 has hit the streets?
The new eighth-generation Corvette is an absolute revelation, and in a world without social media influencers and YouTube trust-fund kids it would do to exotic-car sales what the Glock 17 pistol did to the sales of high-priced police revolvers. It’s fast and it’s thrilling and on the street it has simply massive presence.
But.
It’s not what a Corvette has always been. You can barely see the hood, and you’re sitting up close and personal with the front wheels, which is confidence-inspiring on-track but doesn’t make you exactly feel like Tod and Buz on the open road. The interior aesthetic is more Battlestar Galactica than Two-Lane Blacktop. There’s no clutch pedal and there will never be one. You won’t be able to fit a broken-down mountain bike or a whole vacation’s worth of luggage in the hatch.
The C7, on the other hand, is basically the perfect traditional Vette. It takes the promise made by the C2 and largely fulfilled by the C4—no-excuses performance, combined with no-drama ownership—to its logical extreme. It looks exactly like a Corvette. You can remove the top with no hassle, or you can buy a conventional convertible. On a racetrack, it is idiot-proof and hugely reassuring while at the same time offering pace on par with modern-era Ferraris. Most of the components will last forever or close to it.
Not only is the C7 a great car, it’s a great American car. It makes no excuses for itself or for its owners, because it doesn’t need to. It’s not a “poor man’s” anything. If you buy one, you will never get tired of exercising its capabilities on a backroad or a racetrack. And if you want to make big numbers on a dyno or small numbers on a road course, there is an aftermarket like none other. All of this, for the price of a minivan with second-row movie screens.
Loved by most, feared by many, and respected by all, the final front-engine Corvette is a masterclass in everything from vehicle dynamics to storage space. Wouldn’t you like to say you got the best deal possible on one? Of course you would. Go make an enthusiastic choice, a positive choice, an 11-second quarter-mile choice with a tinted targa top and that silly, but wonderful, red-leather interior. Thanks for reading.
