Last January, we purchased a 2001 Chevrolet Corvette. Fast forward just over a year later, it’s dead. We counted. It’s been exactly 379 days since we received the title for the Corvette and now it’s sitting at blocks at a Chevy dealership in Plano, Texas. So. Let’s address the elephant in the room, how in the world did we manage to kill a car that hasn’t even notched 90,000 miles on the odometer?
The Story No Owner Wants to Tell
Well to answer that question, we must start back at the beginning. We purchased our Corvette for $15,000 with just over 60,000 miles. Since then, we have raved about the Corvette, citing its bargain price for the amount of power and performance you get. The C5 generation Corvette to this day is still one of the world’s greatest automotive values. Since we bought it, we put over 20,000 miles on it, using it as our daily driver for nearly everything from Dairy Queen runs to running quarter miles at our local drag strip. This car has been to nearly every car meet in the DFW area and is our favorite vehicle in the fleet.
This car has gotten all of our love, and yet it seemed cursed from the start. Not even a week after we bought it one of the pop-up headlights failed. As much as we humored ourselves with the car winking at every single vehicle that we encountered on the road, it needed to be fixed. We ended up with no money spent on the project because it turns out it’s a common issue on the C5’s. Spoiler alert: this is called foreshadowing. We thought it was squared away and we took the Corvette all across Dallas. From car meets in Downtown to a Corvette meetup in Allen. We made sure our Corvette got quite accustomed to the area. Mainly because we simply wanted seat time in it, and this is a car which you simply can’t get enough of that in.
Here’s Some Corvettes That Actually Work
‘Twas Over Before It Even Began
With 350 horsepower coming from a tried and true 5.7L LS1 small block V8, we felt confident that this engine was both reliable and powerful. We yearned to keep hearing the subtle growl of the fully titanium exhaust and the optioned Z51 package that we specifically looked for while shopping for the Corvette. Yet no matter how many chances we gave the Corvette, it seemed to hate us. Next, another common issue— the harmonic balancer decided to give out and started squealing like a stuck pig. No, we didn’t want everyone on the road to know that GM decided to make one of the faultiest harmonic balancer designs known to the automotive industry. This had to get taken care of quickly or else the literal crankshaft would push itself back into the engine block and cause catastrophic failure… it’s only been 2 months since I bought this thing. $700 later, we got it done and now all of a sudden we can enjoy a quiet cabin.
Speaking of the cabin, we actually didn’t mind it. One of critics’ biggest gripes about the C5 is its shoddy and quite frankly cheap interior. Almost all of it was made with cheap plastic that looks like it was pulled straight out of a degrading USSR tank from the Cold War. I can only name three things that weren’t plastic in fact: the seats, the steering wheel, and the carpeting. Not exactly Rolls-Royce territory. However, despite this, we found the interior very livable and had plenty of creature comforts that some modern cars today don’t even have. The C5 Corvette was one of the first cars to have a heads-up display, the defining feature of the interior. Adding to the comforts were memory and power seats, auto headlights, and ride mode selection. It definitely was not the worst space to spend time.
As days and months passed, the Corvette went through a slew of different repairs. Everything from the AC belt being worn, to the power seats randomly breaking, the buttons on the door panel not working, to random backfires at the middle of an intersection sounding like we were in the middle of Chicago. It was all money and time draining, but whatever we needed to do to keep this beauty up and running. At the end of the day, no matter how much love we put into the Corvette, it always ended up betraying us.
The End
Then came the final straw; on a light highway cruise back from Oklahoma where we tested the acceleration runs and top speed of the Corvette (cough cough 173 MPH), the transmission had enough. Its internal temperatures were creeping over the unhealthy 220-degree mark, plenty enough to wreak havoc. In addition, the car wouldn’t shift at redline, instead it would just bang off of the rev limiter like a machine gun. Brrt, brrt. We felt like we were Tom Cruise in Top Gun… and not in a good way. A couple of nights later on a serious togue run in the boondocks of North Texas we clearly heard the transmission crying for help with a distinct and ear-curdling grind. Then, the inevitable happened, the GM manufactured 4L60E decided to grenade itself. The car wouldn’t crawl at idle and accelerating caused the car to let out a huge clunking noise. We limped it back to the garage and to a Chevy dealership and that’s where it still lays today.
10 months later and we’re still waiting for a replacement transmission. The culprit? The engineering brass at GM decided to integrate the transmission cooler into the radiator. Clever idea right? On paper, yes. However, this is GM quality control we’re talking about, this stuff isn’t the cream of the crop when it comes to craftsmanship. Coolant from the radiator leaked into the transmission fluid thus rusting out the transmission.
So, there she lies, the once mighty vehicle we used for nearly everything relegated to jack stand duty. The transmission is caught up on backorder and we’ve been waiting for parts for over 10 months. Supply chain or not, it’s hard to say whether she will be resurrected or brought back to life. Surely, we hope she will but whether that’ll be in a timely manner— we’re yet to see. While we wait and twiddle our thumbs for a new transmission, maybe one that won’t decide to throw itself off a figurative bridge less than a year into ownership, our love for our Corvette will never die no matter how many times it has stabbed us in the back.
