Dumping The Corvette C7 GS | Final Impressions

This is my 2019 Corvette Grand Sport. It's a C7 generation. I've owned this for a little bit over three years, since new, and I've put over 32,000 miles on it. And in this video, I'm gonna say goodbye to it. Mostly gonna be walking you through what it's been like to own all these years. I've dailied it, I've tracked it, I've driven it cross country. So I'm going to do my best to break down ownership costs, reliability concerns, model year changes, and whether or not you should potentially buy one of these for yourself, now that they're in the used market and potentially more affordable. Let's first talk about the highlights of ownership. During my time of owning this car, I've averaged a little over 18 miles per gallon, including track days, which is pretty damn impressive for a dedicated sports car. I've gone through five sets of tires, three sets of brake pads, and I have enjoyed the ever-living crabit of this car. It has been, actually, one of my favorite vehicles I've ever owned. And it's a car that I've learned to like more as the years have gone by. In my original Grand Sport video, where we detailed the engineering and what this car is like to live with, sort of in a short period of time or short period of ownership, I was somewhat lukewarm on this vehicle. And the more miles I've put on this thing, the more I've driven it, I've grown to appreciate its strengths and weaknesses. Let's talk about the interior space first, as this is sort of one of the more simple parts of this car. The Grand Sport came out in 2017. It's a trim level of the C7, and it came in three different trim levels for the interior space. One LT to three LT, being the fully loaded or highest trim variant. This is a two LT, which sits somewhere in the middle. It does not get the fancy pants leather of the three LT, but it does get all the same features. Heated and cooled seats, a heads-up display, and a leather-ish interior space with the Bose audio system, which is the hi-fi system that's only available on the two LT. I also have PDR equipped, which is their performance data recorder you've seen in other cars. In this iteration, I think it's like 1080 or 720p. It's not particularly high-res, but you can use it as a lap timer or recorder, or even a dash cam if you really wanted. As the model years progressed, really the only change on the interior space was software and an overall improvement to fit and finish. Earlier cars, specifically 17s and 18s, like you saw in most C7s of this generation, particularly when they got miles, dashes started to bubble, armrests started to bubble. From my understanding, in the 19 model years, you don't really see that. It could be a mix of the fact that none of these cars seem to have miles, or they just seem to be made better. At least in my case, I put probably more miles on this Vette than the average Corvette owner, and I have no rattles and squeaks. Nothing has gone wrong in the interior. In fact, all the leather, which, mind you, is not all that high quality, has aged exceptionally well, which is sort of surprising to me in a GM product. There were software changes to the gauge clusters, so your information display did change, but the actual content, you can see trans fluid, diff fluid, oil pressure, oil temp, water temp. I think that's still available in earlier model cars, but it gets cleaner in the 19 model year. You get two different seat options. These are the regular seats. You can also get competition seats. From my understanding, from people who've actually spent a lot of time in those seats, they're not particularly comfortable, but they do allow you to fit a harness through the back, so whether or not you find that to be a useful feature, I'll leave it up to you. The T-top on this car, or sorry, the Targa top does come off, but honestly, after the first year of ownership, it never did. It's a pain in the ass to store in the back, and it's, honestly, it's not really worth your time. When you're on longer drives, particularly at higher speeds, or if there's any real wind, the interior of this car buffets like a madman. The interior space, now having lived with this car for a long period of time, is somewhat cramped. While the hatch is very, very practical, like I've talked about in prior Corvette videos, it's really the advantage of this thing, and there was a surprising amount of headroom for a dedicated track or sports car. The actual visibility at the front is not the best. The visibility at the back and the sides are not brilliant. It definitely feels a little bit more claustrophobic, which, depending on who you are, might be a deal breaker. On long journeys, it's very, very comfortable, though. If you can get past the lack of visibility, the thing that the Corvette does very well is eat up miles, and during my time as a daily driver, it did a good job. When you put it in a tour, it's surprisingly comfortable. You just have to deal with a ton of road noise. If you pick a more aggressive tire than these Pilot Supersports, which are run flats, the road noise is very, very loud. Exterior-wise, it's held up pretty well. As you may or may not have seen, if you've been a long-time viewer on this channel, I got this car ceramic-coated and PPF, or paint protection film, on the front. It's held up well. It's seen track miles. The paint's actually in really, really good shape. I've had to replace the PPF once on the front, just have been getting torn up, but it's done a good job. It's not perfect. Some of the pieces of aero kind of got chewed up over the years, as you're kind of expecting, from rocks and road debris. Past that, though, I think it's time for us to head into the shop, where I'm gonna put this thing up and lift and dissect the costs of ownership. In the shop with my C7 Grand Sport. This is a 2019 model with a little over 30,000 miles, and in this segment of the video, be giving you a brief technical overview of what the Grand Sport is. Mind you, you should watch our original C7 video. It's far longer, and we'll go far more in-depth into the engineering of this car. So what about the car? So the Grand Sport existed between the 2017 and 2019 model years of the C7 generation Corvette. It's essentially a trim level. It offers the wide body off the Z06, with more aggressive suspension tuning than the standard Stingray, albeit not as aggressive as the Z06. It has the same identical drivetrain as the Performance Pack-equipped standard C7 Stingray, those Z51 cars. It has the same LT1, it has the same gearing. This car can either be had in a seven-speed manual, which is the one to get, or the eight-speed automatic. I'll talk about that a little bit later. Body structure-wise, the C7 is far more rigid than these standard C6, Z06, or C5, the cars it basically replaces. It has more aluminum, it has a stronger spine, so it doesn't have any of the bobbling that those cars have, particularly when you put stickier rubber on them. This car gets the E-Diff as well, which means it's all sorts of PTM modes, and it's still composite leaf spring front and rear, double wishbone front and rear, and has full alignment capability. The Grand Sport and the Z06 and the standard C51 cars have excellent cooling. You have an oil cooler, you have a giant radiator, and trans and differential coolant. When it comes to suspension on this car, you get two different packages. You can either get the standard Grand Sport, which this car is, or the Z07 package. The Z07 package gets stiffer bushings, sway bars, and I believe spring rates and a recalibration to the MR dampers. That's largely due to the fact that it gets stickier rubber as standard. The base Grand Sport gets Pilot Super Sports, which are run flats. The Z07 cars get Pilot Sport Cup 2s. Their wheels are identical, however, and the tire sizes are identical. The Z07 cars also get carbon ceramic brakes, which we're gonna talk about a little bit later, because that does add some complexity when it comes to the ownership costs of this vehicle. These cars, as they progress through the model years, they refined manufacturing, they got a little bit better built, particularly in the interior space, and potentially a little bit more reliable. That's the joy of having this life of the C7 be so long. The key difference, as well, in 19, the MR dampers got recalibrated to get rid of some of the twitchiness of the 18 and 17 model years. For a while, the dealers would potentially reflash your earlier cars, but seeing that this car has been out, or been dead now for a while, I don't know if you can still do that, so just keep that in mind. When it comes to reliability, as I mentioned in our original video, there are lots of lines for coolers and all other fun stuff. I, with my 19, have not run into any leaks when it comes to cooling lines. I'm sure down the line, as these cars become five, 10 years old, that might become an issue, so look out for that. The other option, as well, is just get a car with an extended transferable warranty, like this car has, or get one certified pre-owned from a dealership, so that you could skip the main heartache with the leaking. That said, reliability-wise, my ownership has been mostly painless. I had some cracked wheels with the stock wheels initially. They were replaced free of charge. That was a problem. It was all over the internet, and I did have a weepy gearbox for a little bit, which the dealer fixed. It's not a big deal. Pass of the drivetrain has been faultless. All my oil analysis. I'm not particularly easy on this car. Mind you, I'm not particularly hard on it, as well. I do all my maintenance like you should, and this car hasn't skipped a beat. All right, consumable costs and modifications. That's the last thing I'm gonna talk about. So, consumable costs. The big ones are things like clutches. They are extraordinarily expensive. This is a transaxle car, so if you have a manual gearbox, essentially you have to drop the rear subframe to do a clutch. It's quite expensive, particularly if a dealer does it, and it's very labor-intensive. Tires are expensive on this car. They come as either 275 or 285 front stock, and 335 rears, and they're like 20s, which are huge in the stock sizes. I went to a set of Apex wheels, which went down to 18s. They're a little bit more manageable when it comes to tire prices, and more importantly, you have far more tire options. The standard Supersports are fine street tires with not great track tires. The Sport Cup 2s, by modern standards in 2022, 2023, aren't all that sticky, if I'm gonna be honest. The 200 treadwear options like the Rivals, the Continentals, various other options are far stickier. They're better tires, to be honest, if you're gonna do track use, which is what you should be doing with your Grand Sport. Honestly, if you don't take it to the track, you're missing out on like 80% of the experience of this car. The other consumable item, other than things like the MR dampers, which are expensive to replace, again, please get a warranty, or just be prepared to spend $500 to $1,000 a corner, is brakes. The carbon ceramics found in the Z07 package are expensive. They're nowhere as bad as, say, on a Porsche or a BMW. They're about $1,000 a corner, which means before pads, you're looking at about $4,000. The joy of the carbon ceramic is, well, they have high thermal capacity and they don't dust, and theoretically, they should last longer than the iron or steel rotors. I have steels on this car because they're cheaper to replace, to be entirely honest. The stocks are like 1,000 for the front, 1,000 for the rear. I want two gyro discs so I could replace just the ring, so in the future, your consumable cost ends up being a little less. The stock brakes on this car, or the iron brakes, are actually exceptionally good. If you properly pad this car, I've done G-locks or counter-space garage pads, and you do the correct fluid, they've got a ton of thermal capacity, and that's never an issue when you're on the track. Last thing to bring up is what I did to this car, like modifications and really anything else that went wrong. Well, a lot of the aero panels on this car sort of get torn up as you drive around, big surprise. When it comes to modifications, I did an AWE X-pipe, which they don't make anymore. It woke up the car a little bit. It makes it sound a little better. I don't think the LT1 is the best sounding, most careful V8 in the world, but this sort of helped, and it maintains the performance exhaust, which is valved. It doesn't drone. It's great. Don't touch it. It's a very nice OEM piece. The other thing is the gearbox. So as I mentioned, you can get this as an eight-speed automatic, which don't unless you are physically unable, either due to a disability or don't know how. You should not be buying this car in an automatic. You should be buying this as a manual. Yes, they're more expensive. Yes, they're harder to find, but it's a better driving experience. That said, I did do the skip, shift, delete. So these cars come standard from GM with software that makes you go to a higher gear if you're low RPM. So you save the environment, better fuel economy. It's very annoying. It's like a $15 part to delete that. And then I did the MGW short throw shifter. It's not my favorite thing in the world, though it does tighten up the gearbox. This Tremec gearbox, while it is very strong, is not the best feeling to operate. It's not the best manual in the world. The MGW sort of improves that, though shifter effort or shift effort is greatly increased. With that said, I think it's time for us to head to Autobahn Country Club where I can put this thing on the track with Mark and walk you through some of the nuances of ownership and what I think now that I'm sort of wrapping up my ownership period with this car. ♪♪♪ Saying goodbye to the C7, Mark. This is how you're doing it? Yeah, with a track day where I blow the first corner because my tires are cold. It's always some excuse. You know, I'm going to be honest, Mark. This is a car that initially, as many will remember from our original video, I had mixed feelings on, right? It wasn't my favorite thing in the world. I didn't think it was the best street car. I didn't... It wasn't necessarily what I was looking for, but now after living with it for 32,000 miles, if you're going to use it as a driving tool to make you a better driver, then be comfortable-ish on the street as you go to and from the track or pile on daily duty and use it as sort of that weekend autocross track car. I don't think there's a better car on the market for like $50,000 to $70,000, depending on miles and gearbox and all that other fun stuff. The C7 Grand Sport is a very, very good driving tool. This is one of the fastest cars you can possibly buy for under $100,000. It's really, really fast. The amount of grip when you tire this thing right is unparalleled. I mean, my major complaint with it, and it's always been, is it lacks some emotion and it has to do with the engine. It's just such a brute force, like, you know, garbage truck sounding thing. And I know people love that V8 tone. It's just that classic sound, but there's no musicality to it. Yeah, it's just, it's generic American V8. How does this, I mean, you've driven this car a lot too, Mark. How does it compare to something like the C8 Z06? The C8 Z06? Yeah. I mean, they share similarities in terms of driving. You're really connected to the driving experience. You feel everything that's going on. It's challenging to control the rear at certain points, but they're both cars that you learn to work with to be faster, become a smoother driver. It rewards smooth driving, but it doesn't like kill you if you make a mistake. I mean, like I said, I just don't think there's much better out there for this. If you can deal with the fact that it doesn't have the beautiful tonal quality of some of the more expensive cars, I don't know why you would choose something else if you're tracking the car specifically. You know, we're out here driving the CRX, the SIR that Scott from King Motorsports built. While I will say this does not have any of the feel of some of the older cars, I do think because this is sort of the crossover point for Corvette, because it is based on an older platform, right? There is still some feedback from the chassis and rawness that's gone in some of its more modern cars, like a Supra, for example. Right, right. Yeah, those cars, you feel nothing. This car, it does communicate with you a lot. I mean, the back end specifically, once you have everything off, you realize how perfectly balanced this car is for this generation of car. They absolutely maximized everything they could get out of this, and the Grand Sport is like the pinnacle version of the C7 for all of these Corvettes. Yeah, Aaron Link, when we talked to him during the C8 Z06 video, even said that the Grand Sport of this generation is his favorite C7 and arguably the best driving. And being out here doing this, being really comfortable with the car, you can run a low 130s all day long on south at Autobahn, which is really, really moving. And you don't have to worry about this car. It has been bulletproof, reliable, naturally aspirated. It has the cooling. If you're running the right oil and doing the right things, you can beat the **** out of this thing. And it's just, it's a pure driver's car. As much as a Corvette's ever been and ever will be, and even in more cases than the new C8, just because you get the manual option, you still feel like you're part of driving this car a little bit more. And if you aren't the greatest manual driver, the car will work with you with rev match. So Mark, with that, I'm going to send it off with a laugh and we'll get into sort of my wrap up thoughts as I'm getting ready to get rid of this car and say goodbye. All right, Jack. You okay? Are you okay? I know, I know you would be. I was like holding it back the whole time. Oh, that would have been amazing to end it up. He just barfed all over you. Oh, great. Final thoughts on my C7 Grand Sport. As I get rid of this to make way for my upcoming C8 Z06 purchase, I'm left feeling a little bittersweet. While I have definitely gotten my money's worth out of this car, when I first bought it, I wasn't totally in love as I kind of mentioned in the beginning of this video. The street dynamics left me a bit cold. I felt like I should have bought something like a GT350, which is a far more emotional engine, or sold my internal organs to buy something like a GT3. But as I learned to appreciate what this car does well, I've come to really, really enjoy it and appreciate its capabilities. As a street car, due to its long gearing, its extremely high limits and the lack of sort of drama, it's not the most exciting thing in the world. The gears are really, really long, so by the time you wind out this car, particularly in third gear, you're well exceeding the speed limit basically in go to jail territory. The limits of grip are so high and the fact that there isn't a ton of feedback from the chassis, again, to make it a bit more comfortable, you don't necessarily feel a whole lot. It's not the most exciting car in the world. That said, it's a good deal. Good fuel economy, reasonably comfortable, and for a dedicated sports car, surprisingly practical. But to really enjoy this vehicle, as I found out, you have to track it and appreciate what it does well. It costs less than a quarter of what a new GT3 does. While not as capable, it's pretty damn close. It's about as capable as a 991.2 GT3, particularly when you go up to larger front and rear tires or at least stickier front and rear tires. The car speaks to you in a way that some of the more modern vehicles like the C8 Z06 does not. It has some of that old car character because the C5, C6, and C7 are all basically derivatives of one another. The steering gives you a little more feedback. The chassis is more willing to bite you. So it's a vehicle that you have to grow with and drive hard to get the most out of. And that's something I really, really appreciate about this car, not to mention the fact that it has a manual gearbox. It's not the most inexpensive car to run, and it's not necessarily going to be the most easy car to work on. Dealership support, while there are some good ones, definitely there are some bad Chevy dealerships. It's complicated, a lot of coolers. You have to deal with cracking wheels. Since I started this video, one of my right rear wheels cracked and was replaced and it's like $1,000. Thankfully, I did have that wheel and tire protection plans. But there are complications to do with the C7, and they're not the cheapest thing in the world. Today, as I'm in the market selling one of these things, 19 Grand Sports with manuals are exceedingly expensive, well over $60,000, which does make this a more expensive vehicle. But if you are in the market for something like an M4, a new C8, a Porsche product, and you are going to track a car or autocross it, I highly suggest looking at a C7. It's a car that I've really, really appreciated, and it's a car that I've enjoyed my tenureship with. But with that, thanks for watching, and hope to see you soon. God. Savage Geese, yet another notification. Do you know how rich I am? Are you not hearing me? We unfriend, we unsubscribe. Get it done. I'm rich. Why is this a problem? I'm rich.