The car deposited at my house in Atlanta was a 495-hp C8, the mid-engine Vette that GM built to deliver exotic performance at American middle-manager pricing. So maybe I am the wrong person to drive a Corvette, or the right one, because the car C/D sent wasn't the Corvette I remembered, the kind the neighborhood dads would wreck two weeks after bringing them home. (That car would be an '87 Grand National, the looks-don't-matter hero of my youth.)Īlso, I spend most of my working hours considering college football, the sort of thing that can immunize one to elegies for the everlasting American spirit, be they aimed at storied universities or storied automotive brands. Give me something focused less on aesthetics and more on beating skulls on straightaways. The Corvette seemed to be a kind of mostly cosmetic speed machine enjoyed by the mostly cosmetic. Nothing pleased or still pleases me more than cheap thrills in rally frames and eccentric rattletraps seconds away from falling to ribbons. A Mazdaspeed 3 torque-steering off the road or a derelict Volkswagen Thing moving any faster than 35 mph fit my needs perfectly. I loved either speed or danger in my cars, the cheaper the better. I grew up watching what I thought real speed was: rally cars flying off Corsican cliffs, NASCAR machines roaring at Talladega, and Ayrton Senna ripping up Monaco in a McLaren.

2023 Chevy Corvette C8 Z06 Will Debut October 26

Brutal heretic