Synopsis
Following a 67-year examination involving a sample size of approximately 1.693682 × 10^6, our research has concluded that the Chevrolet Corvette undergoes a three-stage life cycle at discrete intervals (varying both in duration and intensity). The below abstract summarizes these findings and is currently undergoing peer-review with both the Journal of International Development and the Yale Journal of Criticism.
Background
The Chevrolet Corvette - the second most popular vehicle made in Kentucky following the Toyota Camry - has been the subject of critical praise, scorn, speculation, and adoration. Owing cultural capital to both astronauts and Prince, the platform has remained staggeringly persistent in American discourse since the end of US involvement in the Korean War. It is this position within the overall social narrative and relevance to the market at-large that translates to an exaggerated life cycle embodied in the stages defined below. Unlike most biological cycles, the car does not always evolve and frequently remains stuck in an earlier stage in perpetuity. In the older generations particularly, Corvettes often serve as a reminder that human body is, ultimately, a wear item.
Findings
Stage 1: First Owner
Perhaps more so than any of the other stalwarts in the sports car space in the decades since its introduction, the Corvette in all its various iterations has signified a high water mark of democratized performance residing at the nexus of contemporary zeitgeist, consumer compromise, and fiberglass mass production. If the Porsche 911 represents timeless design and function, the Corvette is a product entirely of its moment: a snapshot of the moment which it was developed, sliced thin and backlit for microscopic observation.
Chevrolet has unique access to the sort of Kirkland Signature horsepower and handling by virtue their position as a corporate monolith. Their distinctly utilitarian approach to performance maximizes the most amount of speed for the most amount of people. It's easy to draw the archetype for Corvette ownership as podiatrists who lack the endurance to keep their Harleys upright at stoplights; however, that reputation appears to be one earned only in the later generations and ultimately slightly (slightly) disingenuous.
Imagine, if you will, shopping for a new Corvette at any point in the last 60 years. Try to put yourself in the frame of mind as someone with the funds or financing available to them who is set on purchasing a car that meets not just their selected search criteria on AutoTrader but also fills whatever emotional needs in the same manner as the United States' best effort at a response to "what is a sports car?". Taking into account the potential offered to the common owner, the search winnows to a meager scattering of results.
As echoed in the study's ancillary findings, certain responses regarding practicality make that manner of illogical decision vastly easier to rationalize. Fuel economy and luggage space and availability of maintenance are not sexy statistics for someone who stocks value in the least amount of time required for a motorized vehicle to return to its original location after following a nonsensically indirect stretch of patched tarmac in rural Germany. However, these are questions buyers have to answer at some point, and having an answer that doesn't shrug and point to 0-60 times means our First Stage owner doesn't have to compromise as much as they'd expect.
The study frequently found that this owner is someone who, through no fault of their own, may have acquired the desire to own a Corvette entirely independently of automotive enthusiasm. Contrast that with someone purchasing a Toyota RAV-4 despite having zero desire to own a personal vehicle and you'll get how absurd that premise is. It's that desire that motivates them entirely outside the natural confines of the enthusiast subgroup. To this person, a Corvette is perhaps the embodiment of years of work. Something maybe more stylish or cool than they perceive themselves possessing.
Frequently finding owners several standard deviations outside the car enthusiast curve, you find behaviors that include:
- changing oil with religious fervor
- changing tires due to old age, not wear
- washing and waxing their cars on set schedules despite logging maybe dozens of miles, or maybe none at all
First Stage Corvettes occasionally do not evolve past this stage. As some are cared for with the sort of sympathy that is only found in biological motherhood, even common examples across the entire production run can be found in a condition that was likely better than when they were delivered to the dealer.
However, some in this initial stage are purchased by individuals who may have been overly eager to access levels of performance that were previously restricted to those who are playing with house money. These tend to be driven, used, tracked exactly twice, leased for 36 months, and used to pick up kids at school on Fridays.
These become:
Stage 2: Second and Third Owner Corvettes
The prospect of accessible performance does not begin and end with primary ownership. Corvettes - generally, and regardless of evolutionary stage - do not cease to be the highest level of performance attainable for the manufacturers' suggested retail price. Rather, they continue to enjoy that distinction from the day they roll off the line until they find their unceremonious end at a salvage yard or find inexplicable love in an online auction.
The platform - as a function of the sacrifice that must be made in order to satisfy management's fiduciary duty to General Motors' shareholders by providing some margin on a lower-volume flagship product - has endured some weaker points over the years. Troublesome transmissions, overheating issues, problematic valve lifters, poor seat options, Optispark in both concept and execution, and whatever various mechanical and ergonomic maladies that plague early reviews tend to be remnants chuckled about by the time the subsequent owner takes possession.
There are a flood of resources and media available to our Second Owner, who has no excuse to make the same complaints that automotive outlets have been making over the cars' entire production run. This is a transaction that the Second Stage purchaser goes into with their eyes wide open.
But that practicality and best-in-Craigslist-ceiling-price-class performance becomes somewhat easier to justify when you're paying a 40% discount to MSRP just a few years past the car embarking a truck off the production line in Bowling Green, site of the great Corvette diaspora. Suddenly the math that had to previously been hoodwinked can be invited back into the equation. A $65,000 car that has trouble clearing some regulation-size speed bumps doesn't necessarily make sense. But a $40,000 car that has clearance issues?
This translates to a beloved symbiotic relationship between owners and cars entering the second stage of their evolution. Amplified by the expiration of the manufacturer's warranty, the Second Stage owner may begin to rectify those areas deemed critically lacking with aftermarket solutions. What might begin as a short-shift kit or exhaust valve remote can just as easily get out of control, tipping that compromise column into an absurd realm with forced induction and recreational nitrous oxide. Those added compromises can often force the owners to release the car into the Third Stage.
Stage 3: Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, etc. Owners
Our findings have shown that while the crossover class of vehicles represent the ultimate compromise for buyers, the Corvette represents a compromise of an entirely different order.
What this best value proposition presents to the population at large - and what we see come to blossom in our third and final evolution - is that the Corvette's accessibility allows owners down the tax bracket to use the car both as a backdrop for adventure and canvas for expression.
This third stage of ownership might place the Corvette one step away from a Copart eulogy; however, it is also where the bulk of subjects achieve their true potential. Unshackled by cost and societal constraints regarding sound deadening and mufflers, the car has been set free to achieve performance marks and carry the art of automotive modification to peculiar and delightful places.
While First and Second Stage Corvettes frequently reside in a reality that has to pay at least lip service to resale value, Third Stage examples exist deep in the valley of the depreciation curve. This is where the platform can fully conform to whatever whims the owner might have concocted, for better or worse. The Third Stage is filled with Vettekarts, Craiglist nightmares, Ridler Award winners, drift missiles, decorated SCCA racers, and the rest of the donked, slammed, stanced, retrowave'd, HPDE'd, Solo 2'd, Goodguys'd, and rallied examples. Period correct or incorrect or even both, on occasion.
Vehicles of this vintage tend to accrue stories - both cautionary tales ending in salvage titles and epic tomes of races won and lost, passed along as oral histories at the bar or whatever contemporary campfire equivalent you tend to gravitate to. Scrapes and cracks and modifications of dubious pedigree. Third Stage Corvette owners almost always have a moderately embellished answer for the "how fast have you gone in that thing?" question at the gas station. They will never hesitate to tell you how they came to acquire their particular example, regardless of whether you asked them.
The First and Second Stage are where the mythos originated, but the Third Stage takes on a life beyond just being a halo car for Chevrolet dealers to keep Equinox buyers entertained in the showroom until their sales staff can make an introduction.
While telephone poles, ditches, and projects requiring a donor drivetrain will take their share of Corvettes off the road every year, the stories that are written in this final evolution are often the most rich and textured.
Conclusion:
It is neither a mystery nor a surprise to anyone in the academic community that the Corvette offers all the punch, practicality, and refinement of hand sanitizer. Whether it is an indictment of the owner demographic or sheer corporate inertia, the car has stubbornly lodged itself into the conversation and, without evidence to the contrary, will remain there for the foreseeable future.
It is impossible to qualify the cars' 67-year duration as anything other than a categorical commercial and cultural success. Through the stages from construction to destruction, the Corvette has provided for a rainbow of experiences in the quest to bring speed to the masses. And like the proverbial Monarch moth-to-butterfly story of aging with imperceptible grace, most will find their fragile death somewhere near the Mexican border having lived an incredible journey and looking damned good while doing it.