C7 Corvette Buyers Guide
Video Transcript:
[Music] hello everybody happy friday welcome back to lyle's podcast here from cns corvettes in sarasota florida today i'm going to respond to several requests from you my subscribers to talk about a basic buyer's guide for the c7 corvette and those corvettes produced between 2014 and 2019. i'm not going to get too in depth with special editions and this that and the other i'm going to cover the basics of what you need to know about that production run at this point so if you're going to go looking for a c7 here's some things to consider and some knowledge you need to keep back here in the back of your head 2014 first year production based stingray coupe and convertible both available the car came with either the seven speed manual or with the six speed automatic which was basically a carry over from the end of the 2013 run in the c6 shifted well handed power well but if you wanted to use the paddle shifters it was like click uh shift it was not fast uh you were better just to leave it in automatic mode and let it do its thing rather than trying to shift it yourself it was a neat idea but it really hadn't come to fruition at that point the good news was that it tends to be a pretty bulletproof transmission you don't tend to have too many problems with it 2014 didn't have a lot of the foibles of the first year corvette production oh don't buy a first year cadet corvette 2014 came out and consumer reports actually rated it a four out of five for initial reliability and quality so it was a strong car and uh all the press that tested it and the long term tests even showed that it was well-built well-designed and didn't give people a lot of problems leading into 2015 we had the introduction of the z06 which had 650 horses supercharged v8 huge monster car wider body work better arrow had the optional z07 package where you could get tires that were almost as sticky as racing slicks huge brakes huge power huge handling but also a fairly huge price tag the if you do any research on these cars online you're gonna see that there is a well-known issue with the eight-speed automatic transmission which was introduced in 2015 to replace the six speed had some problems with overheating especially in track use i had some problems with shuttering especially during cylinder deactivation when you know the car is trying to get better fuel mileage when you're just kind of burbling along the highway um that was an ongoing problem through 2015 and 2016 specifically with the automatic transmission i should say for the entire run of the 14 through the 19s i'm not aware of any major problems with the 20 with the seven speed manual they seem to have performed flawlessly on street on track everywhere so if you like stick shifting stick with that i will say this when the eight-speed transmission is working it shifts almost as fast as a dual clutch which is what the new c8 has but the shifts were much more bang bang bang rather than bang weight bang weight like the old one was the overall car didn't change very much at least the base car from 2014 being only the second year moving into 2016 you had the carryover of the base stingray and the z06 i will say this remember how i said consumer reports rated the 2014 as a four out of five for reliability well partly due to that troublesome eight speed transmission and a few other manufacturing foibles the 2015 and 2016 cars were rated a one out of five by consumer reports which not so good the 2014 15 and 16 cars also have torque tube problems which i've made another video on it went to went into detail extensively about that so if you want to learn more about what torque tube issues they have check out that other video and don't forget to like and subscribe while you're at it okay starting in 2017 we still had the base stingray and the z06 but along came the grand sport much like its introduction in 2010 and the c6 run the grand sport really was the best of both worlds okay so you had the z06 wide body the more aggressive stance the better tires better brakes more aggressive arrow and a lot of the performance bits off of the z06 and you could still get the z07 package basically the track pack in the grand sport for about 25 grand less than you would spend for a comparable zo6 uh the grand sports in the c6 run i've always contended were probably the best car that they made in that run there were faster cars there were more expensive cars in the 05 to 13 run but the grand sport really was the sweet spot i feel the same way about the 2017 through the 19 grand sport actually at virginia international raceway they lapped the grand sport a 2017 grand sport with the z07 track package and it was like 1 10th off the pace set by the c6 zr1 that had considerably more horsepower and was all carbon fiber body and all kinds of neat trick race car stuff and the grand sport was right there for half the price i love the grand sport i especially love the grand sport special edition in the blue with the white stripe and the red hash marks on the fender because oh i've always loved the 96 grand sport anyway ignore me moving on to 2018 not much changed you had a couple of special editions which i'm not going to really go into here i'll do a special video on c7 special editions uh at another time but 2019 the swan song of the c7 still had the bass car the z06 the grand sport and of course we had the introduction of the zr1 one year only a production basically the most powerful car that gm ever produced at that time uh probably still is the most powerful car it's ever produced until the c8 z06 comes out or the c8 zr1 but it was a monster it was an absolute monster you could it did amazing things 750 some horses it was crazy it was expensive but it's going to hold its value because it was one year only and they didn't make a boatload of them beyond that if you wanted a base stingray or a grand sport 2017 2018-2019 all had three and four star ratings from consumer reports rather than the one star that the to 2016 had so keep that in mind i sadly don't fit in any c7 as you've heard me lament many times on this channel so i can't tell you about how great it drives or how great it feels because other than standing next to it i can't participate i know from many of the owners that i have who come here for me to service their cars and spend time with us at sebring on the track that the c7 grand sport is a really great car for really pushing to the limit without having the extra expense and honestly 200 horses that you couldn't use anyway even the c8r only has 550 horses so you can only use so much horsepower on a track otherwise you're just you won't be able to reach the limits of the car which is where you really become a great driver and learn your and your car's limits that's basically my overview on the c7 i'll do another video in a week or so talking about the different trim levels you know the one two three lt all that stuff and i'll break that down for you because otherwise this would run too long if you have questions about c7s or if you have additional comments you think i should touch on with things that they know that they've had problems with make sure to email me at lyle corvetteparkcenter.com and please remember to like and subscribe as i said the more you guys do that the more it helps me make more videos thank you very much have a happy father's day weekend until next time [Music] you