June 17, 2020
Every story has to have a start, right? So why do I enjoy cars so much and why do I like Corvettes in particular so much?
Let me share that with you.
Flashback to 1973 – My uncle and cousins are visiting our home and talking about the good old days, reliving the golden days of fast cars, about their races, their wins with all kinds of cars and the losses to all the great legends of days gone by… Cobra Jet Mustangs, Camaros, Cudas… and the king of them all, the Corvette. These stories sang to me, and I recall wishing I was old enough to drive. This happened many times over the years, and it was great, it ingrained in me a passion for cars.
Flash forward to 1978 – I’m visiting my cousin… and he’s just bought a brand new 1978 “Silver Anniversary” Corvette and it is just so sleek and beautiful. His biggest mistake was taking me for a ride in his ‘Vette, and I enjoyed it so much, I was so impressed, yes I was infected… for life. From that point on, my favorite car was the Corvette. One time while my cousin was at work and his mom impishly passed me the keys and told me to take it for a drive, so me and my cousins took a drive, I was in HEAVEN and my cousin’s Corvette was down 1/4 tank of gas… haha.
I dreamed many times that I might be able to own one, but I was far from being without a car myself… at age 16, before I even had my license, a brand new 1976 Mustang II Cobra (302 cu.in. and 4-speed manual) sat in my driveway. Before that car went, I had already installed headers, cherry bombs, an ignition timing advance kit and a nicely tuned 2-barrel carb… it was slow but raucous and I loved it!
Flash forward to 1986 – Here I am a young man of 26, driving my custom Chevy van, passing a Chevy dealership and on an impulse, I pull in and start perusing their collection of Corvettes. The manager comes up to me… I am straight up honest and say I am interested, but simply cannot afford one. He hands me the keys to his bright yellow ’86 ‘Vette and tells me to go for a spin… all alone. I smile, accept and gingerly drive the car off the lot and find a back road… where I pull off a nice pull up to about 80mph, and on the way back cruise at around 35mph and decide to snap off a hypothetical right left lane change to avoid an imaginary dog in the road. That lane change was so violent that my head bounced off the side glass, giving me a bump and resulted in me calling myself a “dumbass”… but it happened again, embedding the desire a little deeper. The bump on my head faded away in a couple of days, but that memory of that ‘Vette is with me to this day. I smile every time I recall that memory.
Flash forward to 1988, I have my own business and am working my ass off – but still cannot afford a ‘Vette, the next best thing is the wildly popular Pontiac Trans Am GTA… with the 5.7 litre Corvette engine and 4-speed auto. I really loved that car, and had a million good times with it. Years later I let that car go and moved on to an incredibly thrifty used 3-cylinder Geo Metro. It served my needs so well I traded that used one in for a new one and ran that for several years, but it left me cold every time I drove it… it became a symbol of my mediocrity and my life at that time. I needed something more.
Flash forward to 1999 – I have a great job and things are going well. In the space of two weeks, I buy a house, a Grand Am for the lady I was with… and a brand new 1999 Grand Prix GTP… supercharged. The car served me for over 10 years and I loved every minute of it. I modded the living shit out of it and learned a lot about cars and how to tune their more modern integrated computer controllers. It was a very sad day when I sold my GTP… I was not a happy camper. I was relegated to driving my mom’s 2000 Grand Am. A very reliable car, but just… boring.
Flash forward to 2013 – Life was DRASTICALLY different for me. My father was ill and we needed a car for the family. I moved to a 2013 Chevy Impala… a super solid car, super comfy and surprisingly quick… after a nice aftermarket tune was installed by myself along with about 50 hours of touching up the tune for added power and moderate increase in mileage so that 800+ highway kilometers are easy to accomplish as a result. The removed speed limiter and 255+kph top end made it surprising for a car that had a “3 body trunk”… haha. It floats down the highway so soft and comfortable. I like this car… this is a properly quick old man’s car, and I am getting up there… better yet, its the perfect “Jerry’s car” for where I am in my life.
Yet the itch was there, even though I was getting past the age of where most men have their mid-life crisis… haha.
One day Jerry… one day you WILL own that Corvette,