2014 Chevrolet Corvette - The Problem With Being Perfect

In the 1981 film, "The Four Seasons", Carol Burnett portrays Kate Burroughs, an editor for Fortune magazine. She's well-organized, well adjusted, attractive, friendly and personable. In a word,  perfect. Despite her perfection, she feels neglected and under appreciated by her husband, Jack, played by Alan Alda. During a heated exchange between them, Jack dismissively calls Kate, "perfect". Kate, furious, lashes back. "The problem with being perfect is I cease to exist. I'm invisible!"

I recently read a review of the new for 2014 Corvette. Aside from some minor noodles about some cheap interior bits the review was glowing. The author of the article claiming the new Corvette is as good, if not better, than any sports car in the world. After 60 model years and now 7 "generations", the Corvette is perfect. Congratulations, General Motors, you might as well have just made the Corvette invisible.

Later on that sun splashed Sunday afternoon, my wife and I jumped into our '77 and headed east along the shore way for dinner in downtown Cleveland. The AC didn't work, the ride jarring, the brakes were sloppy, it certainly didn't handle even as well as my 2002 Monte Carlo SS and to make matters worse, it overheated less than five miles from our home and we had to pull over. We limped home laughing twenty minutes later.



The new Corvette is nothing like our '77. My wife has commented that out '77 isn't even a "real car". What our car is, is awesome. As is the 2014 Corvette.

Cars today, in general, perform at levels far and above what even our '77 Corvette could ever perform at. They're also infinitely more reliable than they were years ago. The new Corvette performs at levels far above where today's high performing "normal cars" can. Again, that's saying a lot seeing how even cars like my wife's company issued, 2012 stripper Camry can run circles around my "sport suspension" equipped, '02 Monte Carlo. If you're so inclined to purchase the new Vette, be sure you somehow have access to a race track or race course where you can really open it up.  

Last summer was a tough one for our Little Red Corvette. Our car has a myriad of electrical gremlins and they got the best of me several times over. It seemed it was "offline" as much as it was "online".  That's ok, really. I enjoy working on it and get a great feeling of satisfaction when I fix something that went wrong. I do wish, though, that it was more reliable and it could perform at a higher level. Updated shocks and brakes should get it to at least the level of performance it was designed to be at. In a straight line, the L48 pulls like a locomotive engine. Quite fun.

While we don't use our Corvette as a daily driver, I have to imagine many buying the new Corvette would use it every day. I have to wonder, though, if, like many things could a car even as spectacular and perfect as the new Corvette just become another car after a while? 

  

We get our less than perfect Little Red Corvette out of storage the second weekend in April. We can't wait for another summer season of less than perfect.