It took me a little while to embrace the looks of the new C5 Corvette. I liked the overall style, but it took me a little while to embrace the back end. To me, it looked a lot like a Can-Am car. It grew on me, though and I got this 1998 Convertible. Just as I had presented my 1996 Corvette to my Chief Financial Officer, when I got a new 2000 Corvette, I presented this one to my Chief Information Officer. He still drives it as an everyday driver.
John DiPietro states it well:
Thirteen years after the C4 first appeared, the first C5 generation Corvettes rolled into showrooms — a completely new design and better in most every way, save perhaps one controversial design element. Let’s just say that Sir Mix-a-Lot’s song “Baby Got Back” could have been its theme song.
But under the skin all was good, with a new, all-aluminum 5.7-liter, 345-hp “LS1” V8 as well as a new chassis with a rear-mounted transmission that contributed to more passenger room as well as much easier ingress/egress versus the C4.
And the interior is an improvement over the C4’s, with less hard plastic and more comfortable seats Being well sorted right off the bat, the C5 didn’t go through many big changes throughout its run, apart from the introduction of a lighter, fixed roof coupe (FRC) variant for ’99 and then the muscle-bound Z06 for ’01 (succeeding the old ZR-1 as the top dog in the Corvette kennel).
