Everybody is Your Friend

Well, almost everyone for me. When I arrived home from the dealer with the C7, I backed the car into the garage and proceeded to unscrew the front valence bolts to install my awaiting Lashway splitter. Within seconds, my neighbor and his wife were standing over me admiring the car, another guy from up the street walks up my driveway and says that it is the nicest car that he has ever witnessed in person, another resident rides by and yells nice car and gives me a big thumbs up, and then my best friend calls to see if I picked up the car yet and proceeds to drive up to admire it. Here's where it gets weird. We meet up later at my best friend and his wife's to go to dinner who, by the way, are huge classic Mopar fans and owners. His wife walks out of the house and doesn't make eye contact as we sit in the C7 waiting. We get to the restaurant and she gets out of their car and heads straight to the restaurant , not mentioning or looking at the car. Same thing after dinner. I told the wife, I knew this thing looked like the Batmobile, but I never knew it had an invisible mode.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion. Most people are excited when someone else gets a raise, does well in a golf game, achieves one of their personal or professional goals, but we all know one or two who do not take other's achievements and successes well.

You and your significant friends and some of your family love your Corvette, and if the rest are happy in a Mustang, or a Porsche, good for them. And if love their Prius, their bicycle, whatever, fine with me.

Annie and I are happiest when we are driving in our Corvette. Going somewhere in it always puts a smile on our faces. Looking at it after I have cleaned it makes me happy. "Exercising it " on curvy country roads beings real joy. It is America's sports car! And, all those things, individually and collectively, are what counts to us.

Unfortunately the attention factor can be a double edged sword. I recently sold an Inca Gold 2002 Chrysler Prowler mainly because I couldn't drive it anywhere without it drawing too much attention. Initially the attention factor was kinda fun, but after a short period it got to be a pain. The attention this car got was way beyond the occasional thumbs up. Just stopping at a gas station would typically mean a I'd be get stuck answering questions. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy talking about cars, but several years of; What is is? Who makes it? Where can I get one? Can I take some pictures of it? Are you a pro-football player? Are you rich? What engine does it have? Can I sit in it? On and on. This tended to take the fun out of ownership for me. Once my wife pulled into a gas station with it and a guy actually started getting in the car with her. (Luckily she was prepared to stop him. ;^)) After that episode reality tends to set in and the mind starts thinking how easily that event could have turned into a car jacking or theft. Our Prowler ended up becoming a garage queen, so we sold it. The funny part was, the best part of owning the Prowler was looking at it because it wasn't that fun to drive. It had the suspension of a skateboard, no room inside, and its 235hp V6 wasn't all that thrilling. Looking back, its purchase turned out to be more curiosity more than anything else, but we certainly learned out lesson. Getting attention can be a good thing, but as the saying goes... too much of a good thing can be bad.

So... When it came time to buy my C7 I purposely didn't opt for a red one, or chrome wheels, mainly to keep the attention factor to a minimum, and I'm happy to say, it seems to be working. Now I can pull into a gas station in my C7, it gets a few stares, and I occasionally have someone ask me a question about it, or give a thumbs up, and this is a much more liveable situation. My C7 is 10x the car my Prowler was, and 10x more fun to drive. Life is good.