The Corvette has always been a car people feel strongly about. Ask someone who grew up around them, and you will usually get a mix of admiration and a few eye-rolls. The admiration is easy to understand. A Corvette, no matter the generation, still has a presence that makes people stop and look. The eye-rolls come from a different place: memories of squeaky targa tops, glitchy electronics, or interior plastics that never matched the car’s performance.
That reputation did not appear out of nowhere. Earlier Corvettes had some real shortcomings, especially in the mid-1980s and into the early 2000s. Many owners remember those issues clearly, and the stories have outlived the cars themselves.
