Chevrolet Corvette C5

He wants it to be special for he and his wife.

That's why he's thinking about doing it with a special car like a C4 or C5 Corvette.

It's more of a GT car, more luggage space than a Solstice.

And he admits he could use the Solstice.

It's crazy, yeah.

I am going to start right where you already recommended.

I'm going to go with a C5 Corvette.

I've got a 2003 maroon.

So import cars were kind of the norm there.

But the C5 Corvette really swayed me.

And one of my engine classes at Cal Poly, we looked extensively at the LS1 engine because it had just been released.

And the professor was just he was blown away by which, you know, talking today, the LS1 doesn't seem that revolutionary anymore.

Yep.

Not particularly, but you can get aftermarket support, and the basics there, like a 2J, an RB, an LS engine from a C5 Corvette, you can modify those things-

Oh, yeah

... and they will just take it.

They had to leave.

The C5 Corvette, it went into limp mode on the last day.

As I mentioned, when we were recording the first podcast last week, the Lancia Scorpion did not make it the following day.

It just went kapoop and the Lotus Elite died.

Yeah,

the parts off the Roadster Shop chassis that we used on the 57 Vette, it used a lot of the C5 Corvette parts.

And it's not just spindles and stuff like that.

I mean, it's like lower control arms.

But for me, the Porsches, the European cars are so good.

You've got C5 Corvette, which is like a real leap forward starting in 97.

So I think I probably stick with that.

I know everyone has moved forward on that, but I think 97 is great.

But here they are parked.

And then here's his O1, so here's his C5 Corvette.

Pretty cool photo there.

Got it for $8,000, that Corvette.

So I'm gonna say avoid the ones you know will be difficult to keep running.

The, the B7 RS4, I'm gonna put that at the top.

You should buy, like, a C5 Corvette 'cause those just-

Oh, wait a minute.

And I learned that I could share that with others and offer that opportunity.

So I founded Bennett Motorsports Support and the whole idea was to reduce the barrier to entry for folks that want to learn how to race To me, the C5 Corvette is a perfect platform to start with for somebody who's brand new or even has experience.

I have two cars, as you can see behind me, that are set up to basically take somebody from zero to hero.

The bottom one is we call our Black Betty, and that's our driver development car.

Um, we see the, the wheels show up constantly in our shop.

People are just dropping off their C5 and here's four apex wheels.

And it seems like everyone's going like on the C5, three 15 square on the tires.

Everyone's going square.

Do you have a recommendation or is it a case by case basis on what they're driving and how they're driving it staggered versus square? Um,

It really depends on what you're doing.

If it's a dedicated track car, it's almost always square.

However, that often comes with challenges, we'll say, right? If you're trying to shove a 315 on the front of a C5 Corvette, You might have some lock-to-lock issues.