Once again, while beginning my research for this C5 edition of CorvSport’s Bargain Hunting series, I was surprised to find so many cheap fifth-generation Corvettes for sale. I initially set my Autotrader search parameters at $12,000, and 47 units surfaced. Filter out salvage/rebuilt and other branded titles, and that number falls to 26. Once I upped the challenge to $10,000 and less and kept the “clean title” filter, we were down to only 9 C5s in the country.
Here are the best 5. And by best, I don’t mean perfect or even close to it. But the good news is, you can get into one of the best performance bargains for cheap, so take what you can get! [Author’s Note: This article is FREE and not behind a paywall. If/when any popups occur, please click to make them disappear and continue enjoying the article.]
But before we get to our list, let’s again use this opportunity to dive into the vast CorvSport catalog and look at an interesting article that featured the fifth-generation Corvette from our long-time contributor, Simon Bertram.
The Best Daily Driver Corvette
“There are three generations that we think fit the bill as a perfect daily driver. We also understand that this might be a controversial selection, but please do remember, this is just our subjective opinion and it very likely will not match yours.
C5 Generation
The C5 Corvette is really the first generation that could be considered as a daily driver. For sure, earlier generations were used by some as daily drivers, the C5 took all that was learned over the years and added modern reliability to the mix. This isn’t a criticism of build quality of previous generations, it’s that the LS1 was, and still is, a pretty much bulletproof V8.
