Re: The DigitalCorvettes "Thing"
Hello people! I just had to post something when it comes to any discussion about Vettes, because I've had a few. I had the 84 Z-51 that is the stiffest suspension ever put into mass production, and then a new 99 Coupe. My 99 suffered from horrible paint - probably primer - and it got worse as time went by. It had 5 different colors of red on the car, and GM bought it back. First they offered to paint the car, which I refused since I bought a brand new Vette - not a repainted one.
Everyone would think it had been wrecked. I told the C5 people that it never should have left the factory. They insulted me by acting like I had done something to the car, which had 2,400 miles on it at the time they bought it back. My point is that I've never heard of that happening to an NSX. For GM to allow that to happen to their flagship is an indication of something lacking in the quality control end of things, but I guess that can be accepted at the $45k level of business. It cannot ever be acceptable at the $75k level.
The end result was that I took the money and bought a Ford Lightning and a Mazda Millenia for the same price as the new Vette. GM did nothing to see that I ended up happy and in another new version of one of their vehicles.
The Vette still is what I consider to be the biggest bang for the buck available today, but there are millions of them on the road now. Further is that the Z06 will be the highest base price yet, and I just don't see the justification. We all have our own choices and make them according to individual needs. I just don't want to drive anything that is common and ordinary, and happens to fall into the abyss of instant enormous depreciation.
Second point: For anyone to say an NSX looks like anything else (be as insulting as you want) means NOTHING. I don't believe any of us realize the vast discrepancies in humans when it comes to interpretation of visual input. I worked at a place where all the top dogs parked their luxury cars in the front row, and we all had to go outside to smoke, standing ten feet away from the luxury lineup. One of the owners of those cars was a young lawyer who drove a Cadillac STS. It was wonderful pearl white 2 door, and he banged up the right front fender. For weeks he drove it like that, and the comments from the peanut gallery of about 150 people was "When is he going to get it fixed?" This went on for weeks, and finally in it's place one morning was a 4 door Coupe Deville - IVORY white. I knew immediately it was a loaner, but heard three of the men standing there say "It's about time he got that car fixed!" I was stunned! I spent the next few days making the comment "Well he finally got it fixed" just to see if they recognized it was not the same car. Over half did not. I had never realized we had that much of a difference in our interpretation abilities when looking at a car. For the first time I realized how/why some people say they cannot tell the difference between models. Just because WE DO, we assume that others can too, and that, my friends, is simply not true. Many people see a lump of color with 4 wheels, and little else.
So - point is that when anyone tells me my car looks like a 49 Gizmo, am I going to feel bad about their statement? Not at all! Instead I feel sorry for them because they are obviously not able to pick out the finer points in automotive design (like one is two feet lower than the other, one had four doors and the other two, etc.) Makes me wonder what they see when they look at their vehicle (Vette or whatever). Also makes me understand why they get insulted about people telling them it looks "Viperish." To them it doesn't, because they don't see the lines of the Viper either!
Reading the posts here about these type of things tells me more about what the author of the post is like as a person, and that's why I read them. NOT because I want anyone to defend this or that car.
Zap :smile:
