Chevrolet Corvette Stingray
It’s time to challenge received opinion again. The wellworn cliché that American cars don’t work in Britain, being too big in every dimension, and so ill-handling as to be a liability. Because the C3-generation Chevrolet Corvette Stingray was crucial to keeping the sports-car flame alive in the Seventies. As well as being far better to drive than you might think, it was also devastating on the racetrack, and far more sold in Britain than you might imagine too. The first surprise it springs is when it’s parked up alongside the other three cars here. It looks more compact, thanks to dimensions that taper whilst the others square off, and the cockpit is narrower than the others too – something which was criticised by road testers when it was new, but which helps to move the driver towards the centre of the car, making it much easier to cope with lefthand drive on narrow UK roads. Everywhere you look in the Corvette, there’s drama. The wings swoop and plunge like rollercoaster tracks. The driving position is extremely reclined and comfortable, the steering wheel is on a very long column and ends up in my chest like an Austin-healey’s, and the instruments live at the end of deep coves that end near my ankles. If the car were also covered in flashy decals, side-exit exhausts and excessive chrome it might look tacky, but there’s enough restraint to bring it into the realm of mere flamboyance. Quad round taillights nod to Ferrari, which brings another realisation – it reminds me a lot of a Daytona. It has a comparable competition record too.
Admittedly its steering – the only power-assisted setup here – isn’t fast or feelsome, but it makes high-speed lane changes easy. Thankfully the chassis more than makes up for it in its composure. That will surprise American-car critics, but never forget that the US has always been the world’s biggest market for European and Japanese sports cars, so building a sports car that doesn’t handle well, even in the country of perimeter-frame land-yachts, doesn’t make sense. With its independent rear suspension, it’s certainly more sophisticated than the TR7. You wouldn’t necessarily go attacking gravelly B-roads in it – you wouldn’t do that in a Daytona or Ghibli either – but you can press on hard in multi-apex sweepers with the mid-front-engined chassis feeling nicely balanced, without it leaning or lurching. You do feel its weight over undulations though, as it bounces heavily on its springs.
This particular example may sport an automatic gearbox, but the GM Turbo Hydramatic was considered good enough for the Ferrari 400A and Iso Grifo. Combined with 270lb ft of torque thundering in at a mere 2400rpm from its ferocious-sounding V8, it’s an entertainingly responsive powertrain that never hunts for a gear when you put your foot down. This is worth remembering, because it’s that torque that truly makes the Corvette special. Post-oil-crisis Corvettes made a paltry 185bhp, but that misses the point – it’s a sports car, not a muscle car. Of all the cars here, only the overtly race-bred TVR is quicker to 60, and the ’Vette is fastest too: 132mph.
Seventies Corvettes are easier to find in the UK than you might think, a legacy of politicians encouraging tax-generating US imports at the time in an attempt to offset the loss of import tax revenue when the UK joined the European Economic Community, and they were popular on the flames-and-metalflake custom-car scene too.
Between £16k and £18k is the going rate in the UK for a Seventies polyurethane-bumpered car, rising to £24k for a rare manual or an earlier, more powerful chrome-bumpered machine. You can find cheap ones in the US but buying blind can result in big bills down the line. We found one in New York for £8250 that the vendor is willing to ship to Felixstowe for $1050, but the vacuum-operated headlights don’t work – it may be a cheap fix or a sign of more to come.
The glassfibre bodies don’t rust, but there’s plenty of steel in the Corvette that does – the chassis, especially the sections adjacent to the rear wheels, is rot-prone, and post-1975 Corvettes also had steel floor panels that can rust through. Worst of all though is rust in the ‘birdcage’, the steel structure that encloses the passenger compartment. Any repairs to these sections necessitate the body being removed from the chassis, and replacement ‘birdcages’ run to $2000 (£1440) even before import tax and shipping costs are taken into account – something to also bear in mind when ordering easily available parts from the United States.
Thankfully though, so long as it’s rot-free, everything else on a Corvette is cheap – apart from the fuel bills at 16mpg.
‘It reminds me of a Ferrari Daytona. It has a comparable competition record too’