What the fuck where they thinking with this? Someone in the bloated bureaucracy of General Motors sat back and went “Yep, that’s perfect!”

I’d love to have been in the meeting for design of this unfortunate excuse of a sports car. Someone looked at the battery placement, deep in the left front fender and inaccessible without removing the fender or some shit, and signed off on this. What?

I don’t hate GM, or Chevy, or v8’s, or corvettes. I am still American. But I do hate this one. I’ve driven an auto c5, auto c7, and a c8 z51 and came back actually liking each of them, and actually thinking that a c8 z06 might be a car to look at when the engineering money starts to come in. But this abomination…

Where to begin with this mess of car? It’s size? It’s proportions? I’ll just start with the three things I don’t mind about it. The engine isn’t terrible, they had the right idea for the interior, and the exterior does have some style to it, even if it’s overshadowed with the connotation of being that uncle to complete strangers. Yea, I know the z06 was good, yes it introduced us to the LS motor. I’m not paying any more respect to this abomination. You want me to talk better about a c4? Stick me in yours and maybe I’ll see the light.

Anyways, either I’m an idiot (I am) or this car is shit-ily designed (it was), but the rake the windshield had means a new driver or passenger will genuinely run the risk of walking out with a concave skull, which probably explains a lot about all things c4. The tactile feeling you have when you run your sausage like corvette hands over all the GM plastic garbage leaves you more disappointed than an aerospace graduate watching a mechanical engineer get a job at SpaceX. It’s cheap, its trash, you should’ve known this. While it’s not the same level of shoot yourself depressing as, say, any button on a Chevy Aveo, you won’t be looking at a c4 for a lesson in quality control. And the shifter. Good lord, whoever designed it had the wrong cocaine back in the 80’s. It’s like holding rounded cube. You grab onto the large leather rapped knob, feels like whale foreskin, and prepare to for a throw as long as bald eagle’s wingspan. The transmission and clutch genuinely felt like they belong in some utilitarian work truck. I know it’s a common joke, but it was truly terrible. Oh it has an LCD in the dash? Okey that’s cool, I dig it. The rest of the interior is what I’d imagine playing a game of telephone between designers with full access to a dollar store injection molding machine would’ve resulted in, with the prompt being the inside of an a80 Supra (yes I know that car came after this, fight me. I don’t care much for the a80 anyways).

Ya know, my grandad was about to buy a Ferrari Dino back in the day. He bought an automatic c3 instead. It got stolen, and replaced with a c4.

You see that massive rear end? There’s no trunk. There’s an exposed cubby behind the seats that occupies space, but the moment you drop the roof to feel the wind through whatever hair you have left, that space is gone. There’s no transaxle like the later generations? Fuel tank…?

YEP! I had this whole bit prepared about how a nextgen Cup car manages to pack a fuel cell, transaxle, diffuser, and cooling inside that it’s rear end with enough room leftover that I can sleep in there, only to see where they decided to slot the tank on this car. Good, place all weight high in the ass of the car. Make it so you’ve got a foot between the rear glass hatch and the end of the car. I hope that tank isn’t baffled for full destabilizing effect of fuel sloshing around up there. And what the fuck do you in a rear impact? That’s gotta be fun. I don’t get how a car with that much of a rear end fails to have a truck. And I thought the battery location was fucking obtuse.

At least the front makes some sense. The engine is pushed back behind the front wheels which is good, though that means the transmission takes up residence in the cabin. It eats up side legroom in the car, and you sit in there with your legs moved the over to one side due to the child birthing width of transmission tunnel. The clamshell is cool though, you can even see the suspension. And pop-ups are always a plus.

Alright, I’ve bitched enough about the car without even turning the key, so does it improve?

You push the clutch in with the weight of a thousand Big Macs, turn the key, and out comes a bellow of anger and arthritis. Oh god. It’s a 5.7L all ‘murican v8 paired to a 6 speed manual that Moses himself brought down from the mountains to bowling green, Kentucky alongside the Ten Commandments and Nascar.

Driving this c4 was especially angering since it got hot and the rear brakes would lock up after about 20 minutes of driving. They would range from lacking much confidence to stoping the car from moving at all. Also something was boiling by the time we parked the car, don’t know what fluid is was, but temps all read high. Driving the car felt less like a Vette and more like a Van. That stupid transmission… at least it want that difficult to use. The steering was heavy (not that I mind) but at least it could tell me where the tires where. Seating position is less than ideal, and the windscreen doesn’t do you much favors. At least the top can be taken down, I’d hate to have to remember what the visibility is like with it up. The only redeeming quality was the engine, but that’s not surprising. I have a 5.7L v8, a manual to play with, and my right foot eager to know what the pedal will do. To the car’s credit, it moved decently. The whole thing surges forward like a wave hitting a cow. It doesn’t protest, it just moves. The exhaust note on the other hand, is a mix of angry v8 and the kinda noises an old man makes as he tries to get outta bed. Maybe it needed the ol’ Italian tune up (among other actual fixes) and it’d come more alive. It was owned by the 70-something year old late father of Pimp’s ex-girlfriend. That car hasn’t moved in years until we started driving it while he was attempting to fix it. Anyways, it surges forward, force the clutch down, throw the level across state lines, and prepare for another burst of old angry. It wasn’t anything mind blowing, but it was fun while it lasted before the brakes locked up.

Look, it’s a c4 corvette, and a convertible at that. It’s a punching bag of a Vette. We all know it’s shortcomings, crappy material choices, very… interesting packaging, poor design choices… the list goes on. But as much as it pissed me off, the right ideas of a decent car lurk within this corporate mess. The LT wasn’t awful, though I’d love to have tried the original LS, it does pull nicely (enough that I can see how impressive it must’ve been 40 or so years ago), styling on the non-convertible cars looks of its era in a good way, engine placement is about where it should be, and the driver focused interior design is going down the right path, even if the execution doesn’t meet expectations… And I didn’t have much of that going in, outside of the disappointment the car gave me before I took it for a drive, only to leave the experience with a higher appreciation for the car than what I had started with. Don’t confuse that with outright praise, it still kinda sucks.

And I feel a bit bad having to say that and comedy be damned for a sec, those complaints I feel for the most part are valid (wtf is the packaging on this, really…). And the uneasy feeling isn’t about patriotism or what the Vette means culturally or towards the greater Vette community. But more the toward the engineers and greater corvette team that worked on this modern let down of a car. They’re passionate about Corvette and I’d believe they would’ve wanted to give the best product within the restrictions placed by “upper management”, so to know that the car is a disappointment now… just feels like chucking one of those Orange Gatorade jugs from a youth sports event at an old race horse with broken legs.

I know this Vette set up the c5, c6, and c7, from performance to styling to interior design, and it introduced to us the automotive golden child that is the LS engine. And the c4 Vette back in its day was a beast of a car. Compare its straight performance to a Ferrari 308 and it’ll embarrass it, while the handling was significantly improved over prior generations, enough to think that they actually gave a shit outside of Motorsports and it’s homologation requirements. And all for a damn good price. If this was 1985, I’d be joyfully telling how just how great the c4 Vette is, even if the c3 would’ve have had more character. So now in the 2020’s, I just can’t get myself to enjoy it all that much. And it’s not like I don’t appreciate old cars, if anything this thing should be up my alley with that engine.

Maybe in time I’ll drive another one that’ll make me think differently, until then, fuck this car.