Every Corvette generation eventually stops being a used car and starts being a classic, and the C5 crossed that line a while ago. Chevrolet built the fifth-generation Corvette between 1997 and 2004, so the newest examples are now 22 years old and the earliest ones are closing in on 30. Behind the wheel, though, a C5 doesn’t feel like a car from another era. It has an all-aluminum LS V8 and a chassis balanced by a rear-mounted transmission, and it still wears the pop-up headlights that gave the Corvette its face for four decades.
The pricing makes the case even stronger. The average C5 sells for $26,435 as of September 2026. A 1998 coupe carried a base price of $38,995, which means that, before adjusting for inflation, the average C5 now sells for roughly two-thirds of what a base car cost new. That is classic-car status without classic-car money or classic-car compromises.
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