Author Steve Magnante’s only Corvette (so far) changed his life.

      Owning a Corvette changes your life. I know; I lived it. Back in 2006 I was living in Los Angeles, California, and I drove a baby blue 1979 Ford Pinto every day. Yes, a Pinto. Sure, I had some cool cars in the garage (a 520-inch Hemi Dart, an altered-wheelbase 1963 Nova funny car, and others), but I intentionally chose the disposable Pinto for the daily 62-mile run to and from my job as tech editor at Hot Rod.

      Aside from instinctively reaching for gauze bandages whenever I heard cars skidding behind me in traffic, the only things I care to remember about the Pinto were how slow it was and how other drivers generally treated it, and its occupants, like dirt. Getting cut off and passed in traffic were daily events, and I noticed distinctly that gals on the sidewalk averted their eyes when I drove by. No joke. Little did they know that the “loser” behind the wheel had a good job and owned two houses, five very cool other cars, and 14 cats. Their loss, right? But it was L.A., where “you are what you drive.”

      And so, on February 25, 2006, I paid $6,062.74 for a nice, original, white 1985 Corvette hatchback with an automatic transmission and base-level suspension. Instantly, my world changed. Loading groceries into the hatch at Vons supermarket often triggered random conversations with female shoppers, freeway and surface traffic seemed to part around me, and, yes, gals on the sidewalk even gave me a second look. I’d like to think we’re all above such materialistic instincts, but in my opinion it cannot be denied: A Corvette adds excitement to your life. And mine was a 20-year-old model at the time! Based on that small taste of things, I totally understand why some folks buy Corvettes.

      But the real reason is because of how they perform. With its 230-hp Tuned Port 350 and base suspension, my C4 wasn’t the 10-second thrill machine that my Hemi Dart was, but it cornered like nothing else I’d ever driven, and its big disc brakes were always up to the job. I grew to love late-night drives up the Angeles Crest Highway, a narrow two-lane twisting, turning route that led up into the mountains above L.A. Although the Gatorbacks were half-bald, the C4 had amazing grip, and mine was built one year before anti-lock brake systems were standardized, so stopping was never a concern.

      Although my personal Corvette ownership experience didn’t revolve around a particularly rare big-block model or a much more advanced C5, C6, or C7, I get it. Corvettes are a breed apart from everything else on the road. Amazingly, Chevrolet didn’t build Corvettes by the dozens or hundreds like certain foreign supercars. Instead, Chevrolet cranked them out by the tens of thousands every year. Regular Joes and Jills with half-decent credit could actually own them.

      Even exotic varieties with