CORVETTE   

I love to drive and all my life I’ve had ‘sporty’ cars. I started with a Studebaker Golden Hawk, which, sadly, was on its last legs. I had a number of British sports cars and became acquainted with Lucas, Prince of Darkness. However, upon retirement, I decided to get a new sports car, and was set on a Porsche until I drove a Corvette.  That was it - the all-American sports car.

My current Corvette is a 2007 C6 with the Z51 option.  This car, with 400 hp, is more powerful than my last car (C5) and has a better setup for tracking. 

It has coolers for the transmission, engine and power steering units.  The brake rotors are larger and the suspension is slightly stiffer with a larger diameter roll bar.  In addition, the final drive ratio is higher, which produces a closer ratio in the gear box.

I’ve fitted the car with a ‘stone screen’ to eliminate stones bouncing up into the radiator and damaging it.  In addition, I’ve added cooling ducts to the front rotors to reduce the chance of over-heating the brakes.  The paint is protected with the 3M film on the front, rocker panels, lower door portion and the exterior mirrors.  I also made and installed custom ‘mud flaps’ out of 60 mil HDPE to minimize stone damage to the rocker panels.

To date, I have not driven this car on the track due to missing a season while recovering from surgery.  It is an excellent road car, with impeccable manners, superb brakes and tremendous acceleration.  At the moment, the lifetime gasoline mileage is 26 mpg, which includes all styles of driving and runs without a ping on 87 octane gasoline.  On the interstate, the gasoline mileage exceeds 28 mpg.