What Does It Really Cost to Own a C4 Corvette?
Owning a classic car is full of joy and heartache. For every perfect Sunday drive on a crisp autumn day, there are hours of wrenching to fix a problem that always seems to come back. Inevitably, this leads to questions about the cost of keeping a retro vehicle on the road.
This video from Brad Hansen offers an answer by breaking down his ownership expenses for a 1996 Chevrolet Corvette Collector’s Edition over 52 months. After factoring in the original purchase price, all of the bills, insurance, and the proceeds from selling the Corvette, the grand total was $11,009—or $1.09 per mile.
“After adding up all expenses, it tells me that responsible ownership can be not only fun but a great deal financially,” Hansen says. By ‘responsible,’ I mean driving it enough to keep it in good shape and taking care of preventive maintenance.”
According to an AAA study, the average cost of owning a new vehicle in 2023 was $12,182. Hansen paid less than that over four years of driving, though, to be fair, his $11,009 figure includes the Corvette’s sale price.
Hansen bought his 1996 Corvette—the final model year for the C4 generation—for $17,000 in 2019. The powertrain is the engaging combination of a six-speed manual and a 5.7-liter LT4 V-8, making 330 horsepower and 340 pound-feet of torque. He looked at several cars of various sorts that year before landing on the Corvette.
“I was looking for a car that would be fun to drive on the nearby canyon roads, but also livable for daily driving,” he says. “It needed to be reasonably safe, reliable, easy to fix, and available for under 20 grand. Bonus points if it was stylish and not something you saw on the road often!”
Hansen’s Corvette didn’t come with any repair records, so he had a few things to fix. Before even going home after buying it, he took the car to a shop to get fresh tires, an alignment, an oil change, new transmission fluid, a drive belt, and wiper blades. Those were the first of his maintenance costs, which over his entire ownership period came to $5554.
Hansen lives in Los Angeles and used the Corvette as a daily driver. He recognizes that driving a nearly 30-year-old sports car through the city’s famously awful traffic was sometimes challenging.
“Because the C4 is so low and small, you’re on constant alert from other drivers, particularly as modern traffic is full of towering SUVs, trucks, and crossovers who aren’t aware that you’re right next to them,” Hansen says. “I had to use the horn a lot!”
There were times when a classic Corvette was fun to drive in LA, too. Hansen credits the comfortable seats and says there was plenty of acceleration to take advantage of the gaps in traffic. Plus, the car gave him a sense of nostalgic. “Every errand became a cruise back in time,” he says.
Earlier this year, Hansen sold his 1996 Corvette to a buddy for $22,600, which was in line with Hagerty’s $22,100 price estimate for a Collector’s Edition with the LT4 in #3 condition. After some car shopping, he bought a 2007 Corvette with just 12,658 miles. He’s already released a video explaining why a newer Vette is a better choice for folks wanting a sporty daily driver. “Primarily, I wanted that same great Corvette flavor with less of the pain,” Hansen says. “Compared to the C4, the C6’s ride is much smoother, there’s more interior room, the trunk is much bigger, it’s more luxurious, and it’s faster but also more fuel efficient.”
Overall, Hansen is pleased with his C4 exercise and the financial outcome after five years. “After adding up all expenses, it tells me that responsible ownership can be not only fun but a great deal financially.”
Are you the sort who keeps close tabs on the true cost of ownership for your old cars? Let us know in the comments.
I chose the C5 for my best value. I wanted the better platform that is under the c5-7.
I also wanted less electronics.
Best yet I wanted an LS.
The keys are the same C4 or 5. Buy the best lower Mike car you can afford. But don’t buy altar low mile.
Learn what year is best for that Gen.
Pay attention to what can go wrong and parts availability.
If it is a convertible how is the top and clear targa is it cracked.
Tires how old. Expect all fluids to need changes.
My key to spot cars on the web is the condition of the drivers seat. If good and original the was very cared for.
Finally watch YouTube and Lyle from G&S Corvettes in Fl and learn from him the different things on each Gen and know what to expect snd what to do when it goes bad.
I’m not a Corvette guy but a Pontiac guy that owns a Corvette. I found the Corvette people a bit diverse. Most just drive only some wrench vs most Pontiac guys wrench.
The Corvette is still a fantastic value of a car you can buy that is not artificially inflated my the big auctions. There are enough of them in good shape to where you can buy a great car for half of most collector cars. It will out run most stock. It is comfortable and if you are handy you can do most repairs. Unlike most imports you can easily buy and find parts. No 30k mile service needing an engine pulled.
Corvette seems to be deviating from the tried and true formula, but for most of the run, the Corvette was based on the standard parts bin with enough sports car add-ons to make it a viable sports car.
They hit the limit to what they could do with front engine. Also to survive they needed to bring in non traditional buyers.
But even with less parts bin the car like a Stingray is still.selling about the same value dollar wise as in most past models.
Corvette needed to change to remain relevant.
I think it’s a misconception that the Corvette was just a parts bin car. I’m pretty sure that all Corvettes were based on their own unique platforms (I know for sure they have been from C4 on up).
Sure, there were parts bin examples that can be found in the basic engine architecture and interior bits. But the basic platform of the Corvette was about as pure sports car as you could get!
Mine, the engine, transmission, and most of the underhood appliances are parts bin. Front suspension… parts bin. Rear suspension… corvette. Brakes… corvette. Frame, corvette specific but not too far off the beaten path for full frame cars of the era
I was looking at my buddy’s C10 and noted that the Chevrolet letters across the front of his hood are by all appearances the same exact letters on the rear bumper of my Corvette. As I looked at them, I realized that every letter in Corvette is contained within Chevrolet, and not one single extra letter had to be developed for the Corvette.
To answer the headline question-not very much.
The C4 Corvette had a great layout-engine ine the front with the transmission, rear drive and so many made parts are easy to come by. As the generations went on, electronics increasingly became more influential and intrusive. Along with the layout changing with the C5, placing the transmission in the rear, this made maintenance of the clutch and its hydraulics much more costly. Now the C8 has a rear engine layout which makes maintenance a nightmare along with several hydraulic pumps for engine oil, the cost to maintain a new one is prohibitive.
Good thing no one who buys one drives them.
Just bought a 89 c4 mint condition
The headline had me expecting more… data, testimonials, etc.
It’s a great premise but without comparing the 5-10 year ownership of at least 10 C4 I can’t even consider this a sample.
While some Corvettes are beat on… many live pampered lives. If they work for your intentions I think they can be a very good buy. GM DNA is a selling feature in North America at least for servicing for example.
There are two C4’s with lots of data in the embedded video (I made the video and was interviewed for this article, best I was able to find!)
Thank you for your work. For one person accounting for more than a single car like this is a lot. I’m not sure this info is really out there for anything, but it could be very useful & interesting if it was taken further. Not a one person job and the work Brad did here is top level of what you would want people contributing.
Hagerty has the reach though… they literally know thousands of people that have owned C4’s for years. If they put the call out to C4 owners willing to share the cost journey of the last 5 & 10 years (if the person has had it 10) they’d keep an intern busy for a semester crunching all that into a digestible format.
Then they could let a C4 expert (experienced owner) like yourself (Brad) give a practical analysis of the data (are people under-reporting something, did brake wear happen less than you would of expected, how much are people actually driving them in 5 years, etc.).
We are getting a bit of that with the comment feedback, so that is good.
1987 C4 with only 43K, no complaints at all about it.
I bought a ’95 in 2008 which had 10,000 miles on it, essentially a 13-year-old new car. I drove it quite happily until 2016 when I got an ’07 convertible, which I still have. The guy is right, the newer cars are much better albeit more expensive.
It’s interesting to note the common perceptions and cliches associated with Corvette drivers, more often than not from those who’ve never owned or driven one. I’ve loved both of mine, but it’s not a car for everybody. If you prefer the blissful ignorance of a giant 4-door pickup truck then stay away from a ‘Vette. You’ll have to learn to drive very defensively to avoid other drivers who are like, well, you.
To understand the evolutionary process it helps to do some amateur wrenching on an earlier example of the breed. My son-in-law bought a ’76 a few years ago. It’s a real paradigm shift to work on that puppy. But like all Corvettes be prepared to get enthusiastic compliments.