Category: cars

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The car that changed me – the Corvette Stingray

I figured a post about our rental car life at @weekend_whips is long overdue, so I’ll start you off with a story about red hot love in a removable hardtop.

This isn’t the first sports car we rented, it isn’t even the second or third, but it was the one that made me fall in love with Corvettes. Compared to some of the cars I’ve rented since, the Corvette Stingray is nothing special, but it does hold a special spot in my heart.

It was a warm (hot as balls) summer day in 2018 and we decided after breakfast to swing by our favorite car rental spot, the airport. We had reserved a sports car but the way rentals work, it’s not really guaranteed so when we showed up all they could offer were boring stock V6s. A spicy red Corvette caught my eye as we peeked at the car lot so we decided to go for it even though we had really low expectations of it.

All my life I’ve been told that the Corvette drives rough and has issues that have been dissected by people way more knowledgeable than myself, but I had this impression in my mind of the Corvette experience. Chances are if you haven’t driven one that was built in the late 2010’s that you probably share this opinion too. Well, I’m here to tell you that WE WERE ALL WRONG.

Basically, the C6 and newer models are completely different Corvettes than we thought before. Up until this point, I had only driven muscle cars like Camaros/Mustangs so I was expecting it to drive like a really over-torqued heavy beast. What I actually drove was one of the most docile vehicles I’ve driven to date. 100/10 would drive again.

We ended up going up to our favorite mountain spot, Loon Lake, up and down the best parts of the road one time each driver and then woke up early the next day to explore Amador County too on highway 49. I fully expected it to overheat when we were in the mountains, it was like 105 in Sacramento that day and near 90 in the mountains. We moved the temperature gauge a little but nothing to worry about, although the AC did struggle to keep us cool. I was really impressed with everything for a stock sports car like the Corvette. All in all, we ended up putting a clean 500 miles on the car in just 25 hours and it was a hard goodbye at the rental drop-off, considering we were an hour late.

I don’t know if it was the cool factor of the car, or because I had such low expectations to begin with, but this one definitely left a mark in my mind. I still consider this my favorite car although I’d probably never daily-drive one, even though you totally could if you could afford the regular door ding and rock chip repairs.

Since this rental, we’ve rented again like the Grand Sport, but nothing compares to your first time.

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What not to say to a woman you’re selling a car to

Fair warning: Consider this my rant of the week.

Ok, so, background: my dad was a mechanic, growing up he worked on his numerous cars (one day we counted how many he’s owned and its in the 30s-40s at this point), and I grew up watching him tinker in the garage on his FJ-cruiser. I took auto shop in high school. I go to Hot August Nights regularly. I know how to change my oil, a tire, do basic maintenance on my vehicle… though I choose to pay people to do that now. I’m definitely not a person who gets swindled at the auto-shop or at a dealership.

So fast forward like a decade or two, and my significant other has been shopping around for a new car and praise god, he finally landed on one. Well, two, he was trying to decide between leasing a Honda Civic or Accord Sport which really isn’t a necessary detail to this rant but whatever, I digress.

Immediately the sales guy put us off with his fake get to know you act (and it didn’t help he kept forgetting our names). Red flag  #1 was when he compared the rear diffuser on the back of the Civic to those found on actual high-end supercars. Cue massive eye roll and side-eye here. So then we test drive the Accord and we’re making small talk and we mentioned how we rent sports cars on the weekends to tear it up and live like the other half and he asks what everyone asks – what is your favorite car so far? To which I respond with my standard response, duh, Jaguar F-Type or the Corvette.

Once we get back, he starts pointing out the “premium” package this car has, which by the way, is a total rip off for wheel locks, mudflaps, and floormats. Then he turns to ME and starts to EXPLAIN WHAT WHEEL LOCKS ARE. Lord, take the wheel because I am about to slap this guy with a 2 1/2″ wrench and then bust out my micrometer to measure how thick his skull actually is.

It took all I had in me to not school him on who the actual F*ck he was talking to and point out the quite obvious sexist statements but instead I smiled and was like “Yeah I know” and went on my way as to not embarrass my SO. But don’t worry I ranted to him about it later. I guess I was able to get some sweet revenge when he brought in his manager to attempt to close the deal on the car and the manager started quizzing him on the current dealership promos they were running and he knew nothing (shocker).

Let’s hope he gets a good talking to about being an absolutely terrible salesperson cause he definitely didn’t sell me.

TL;DR this is basically just a long yelp review about a terrible sexist salesperson. You’re welcome.