1999 C5 Corvette
You may have seen on this website the 1968 Chevy Corvette project of mine. It was my fathers, and I put a large amount of effort into restoring it. Shortly after getting it up and running, I asked the very reasonable question "Well, what do I do with it now that it's done and drivable?" Come to find out... with a classic convertible car, you can't do much.
With a classic car, autocross is feasible but some groups don't allow convertibles. Track days are out without adding a rollbar which would ruin the cars value, and the drag strip is out as running 13.99 or under requires a rollbar. That limits using that old corvette to sitting around at car shows with old dudes and going to eat ice cream. I've never been much of a Sunday driver, and I don't really get the point of paying to be the attraction in a car show. In the end, it was just not the kind of car I would have ever picked up for myself, and I got pretty bored with the Classic C3 Corvette fast.
Having done motorcycle track days, I knew there was fun to be had out there with the right car. So I saved my money from working a second job and treated myself to a 1999 Chevy Corvette. The 1999 C5 Corvette seemed like the best choice out there for the price. Afterall, the C5 is outfitted well enough from the factory to be a blast with great handling, a reasonable weight and a solid platform upon which to expand. All of these details made the 5th generation Corvette (C5) seem like a simple enough choice.
I spent the better part of a month or so searching for the 1999 C5 Corvette that I wound up with. Most people wanted way more than was reasonable for their Corvettes, and the few that were reasonable seeming the cars had been long neglected and abused. I test drove a few C6 Corvettes, and they all had profuse leak issues and damage at my price point. Just as I was starting to lose paitenance, I finally found a 1999 Corvette in San Diego. The Corvette got a clean bill of health for an automotive shope and was so stock it still had a tape deck in it, just what I was thinking of!
I arranged a solid deal with the owner, flew down to pick it up, and began the journey into tracking an actual modern sports car.
Proceeding onwards, I've gotten further into track days and performance driving along with wrenching my car myself. Back in my sportbike days the best advice I got from a fellow was "if you can't afford to throw it off the side of the track and not cry about it, you've got too much". So with that mindset I've really tried to be as effective with my dollars on this car build to maximize what it can do while also not producing a vehicle so expensive it would cause financial harm to me if it were to go crunch. For example, you can easily spend more money on just brake upgrades on the C5 Corvette than I spent on the entire car purchase. Keep spending money like that and soon you've got a six figure car. I do alright in life, but I can't throw 100k of car into a wall and not give a hoot. So consequently I've had to research, learn and cover a lot of how to do things myself along with just what budget modifications go the most distance! I do a lot of work myself, and some products I've outright designed and developed to share with others myself.
This Corvette has given me many amazing life experiences, opportunities to learn and grow, friends, and adventures. If you have one for yourself, may it treat you the same as well!