Another Look

2005 Corvette Z51: America at its best

I’m not quite sure when it happened, when we reached what Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping point, when we began to accept American goods as inferior and American technology as bloated and unreliable.

That certainly wasn’t how we felt after World War II, when the country that had saved the world basically ruled the free world. We had confidence then, and courage, and sent soldiers to college, rebuilt Western Europe and had no doubt we were the future, Khrushchev’s banging shoe notwithstanding.

Even after Kennedy won the Presidency with his mythical missile gap, we still dared to pay any price, bear any burden for freedom. We were not afraid, for example, to go to the moon, not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

But slowly, that confidence ebbed, that can-do spirit diminished. Perhaps it began with our failure in Vietnam, when we realized that despite all our power, we could not remake the world anew. Slowly, Sony went from an object of derision as a maker of cheap, cheap-sounding transistor radios to an object of desire for its exquisite machines. Japan’s cars followed, with Honda and Toyota becoming synonymous with quality, while, as with electronics companies, American auto companies increasingly looked like aged dinosaurs, unable to compete on aught but price.

NASA raised our spirits to the moon, then we watched in abject humiliation as incredibly expensive and over-budget space shuttles first proved near useless, then worse. When NASA tried to send a ship to Mars, it crashed and burned because somehow people had screwed up English and metric measurements. When NASA tried to grab stardust, sending a ship out to scoop a comet and back to Earth, it plummeted to its death because somehow someone had put a switch in upside down. Therein lies a metaphor.

Now the country that kicked Iraq out of Kuwait can’t secure the victory there; the nation that always responds to disasters elsewhere watches in horror as a hurricane turns New Orleans into some Third World backwater. When Afghanistan offers you aid, you’re in trouble.

And all the while, we watch this on our Asian-made televisions in homes to which we drove in our Asian or German cars. Like the government in a disaster, American automotive technology couldn’t be trusted anymore.

But, as historian Arthur Schlesinger pointed out a while back, history runs in cycles. Motorola may no longer be known as the maker of TV sets, but they make the best cell phones in the business. Boeing, long bashed by Airbus and its government subsidies, has suddenly returned to its accustomed place in aviation. And Coca-Cola’s only real competition is Pepsi.

So too with automobiles. The American consumer may still need some convincing, as witness the employee discount programs needed to lure them into the showrooms of domestic car makers, but they’ll get it. Given the innovativeness now being shown with consistency by American car makers, and given the much improved quality of American cars, the pendulum will swing back our way. Our time is once again coming.

Cars like the 2005 Chevy Corvette are leading the way. This is a technological tour de force that happens to be an incredible driving experience. Like almost nothing save the Mustang and the Jeep, the Corvette has long been an American icon. This 2005 model with the Z51 package says to a waiting world: Eat my dust!

Start with the looks. This sixth-generation Corvette is five inches shorter than the 2004 version, but has just as much usable space. That length and its taut, sculpted lines, as well as the corner jewel headlights, give the Vette a sophisticated appearance that while it never loses that air of muscular menace adds unmistakable beauty.

Put it this way, if you wanted to pick a car for James Bond to drive, the Vette would be a perfect choice.

Inside, the Corvette surprises again. Handling is the expected supercar quality, but comfort is luxury sedan style. Seats are supportive, so that when you check the head’s-up display projected on the windshield for how many g’s you’re pulling – yes, it tells you that and I had a blast throwing the Vette into corners as hard as I could to make that accelerometer climb as high as possible ­– you do it bolstered by great wings that hold you in place. That head’s-up display also included a tachometer and speedometer, so you never really had to look on the dash, but when you did, you weren’t too upset. The instruments and controls really are well laid out and easy to use, but not quite up to the rest of this Corvette.

This Corvette is easily the best ever made, but after a few minutes on the road, that’s not how you’ll measure it. You’ll start comparing it to the European supercars that are far more expensive both to buy and to own. It’s almost impossible to believe that, equipped with its removable roof panel for open air motoring, the Corvette comes in at $43,710. My car also had many options, adding many airbags, displays, heated seats, premium sound a lot more as part of the $4,360 preferred equipment group. The Z51 performance package was only $1,695, and included larger cross-drilled brake rotors and performance tuned tires, stabilizer bars, springs, shocks and gear ratios. With OnStar and XM, my silver metallic Corvette topped out at $51,585.

That was a bargain, considering that in a week I got at least a hundred grand worth of fun out of the Vette. The standard 6-liter sequential V8, well, I’m tearing up just thinking of how good that sounded, and how it felt even better. The six-speed manual transmission was a joy to shift, but my favorite was trying to break the grip of those big tires (18” front, 19” rear) in curves. I was never able to, but would gladly spend the rest of my life trying.

A sad few may think of Corvettes only as a car in which to pick up members of the opposite sex. Drivers know the truth, and drivers who’ve driven the 2005 Corvette with the Z51 package – and here that’s me – can testify that with this iteration of its flagship sportster, Chevrolet has produced a car that takes a back seat to none. Its 400 not-quite-tamed horses comfortably take you on a journey you never want to end. The V8 will take you places from which your license will never return if a cop sees you (providing he’s in an F-16 and can catch you), and probably quite reliably, given its design. Fit and finish are as fine as you would expect in a top line luxury car. Even gas won’t be too bad, with EPA estimated mileage of 18 city, 28 highway.

And the ride, oh lord, the ride… America’s back!

posted by Andy Mais @ 4:18 PM