The Corvette Will Always Be Dad's Car

The 2023 Chevrolet Corvette is an all-American V-8 marvel. It has finally become what many of the Corvette's creators dreamed it could be: a well-balanced, mid-engined sports car that can stand toe-to-toe with more exotic rivals. It's a blast to drive that punches far above its weight even in its less powerful trims.

It is also—no matter how many times they update it or where they stick the engine—Dad's car.

For every car person, there is a model that got them into cars. For me, it was the Chevrolet Corvette. Dad had a series of Corvettes until he decided to have a kid, and as that kid, I am still salty about that. Yet I still have to credit the Corvette as the car that opened up my love of automobiles. Dad would bring me along to car shows as a kid and point out cars that looked like his old ones. Eventually, I started liking the friendly, round shape of the Porsche 911 more, but my respect for the Corvette always remained.

Dad had all kinds of stories about his Corvettes, some of which shape my preferences to this day. I still won't live in a flood plain because of the 1978 Indy Pace Car Edition Corvette he lost when a swollen Holliday Creek inundated his apartment's parking lot. Grandpa had to help pull it off of the sidewalk, and the car was subsequently totaled.I still won't eat in the car if I can avoid it, either. The time Dad threw a melting ice cream cone out the window instead of letting it drip inside his Corvette—while on a date with my mom, no less—became a running joke over the years. It's a bit of an overreaction, but it's hard for me to blame him too much there. That's how you get ants!

When I finally got a Corvette test car to review earlier this year, it felt like I made it. Sure, I've had more expensive and exotic review cars before, but this was the latest version of the reason why I ended up in automotive journalism in the first place. I often feel like a failure lately, having been laid off last September with hardly any options for a new full-time job. I feel like a letdown and a burden to everyone who's put up with me lately, and it's been hard to pick myself up and keep going. Yet for a week, I had the cool car of my most formative years. I even took it on a small road trip to show it off to Mom.

Dad passed away six years ago, but this made me wonder: would he have been proud of me? My week with the car soon became less about testing the capabilities of GM's latest giant slayer, and more about confronting my loss.

As fun as the car was, I noticed myself treating it a little differently than other test cars. My collection of Fisher-Price Puffalump stuffed animals always annoyed my dad, so I intentionally took more Puffalumps than usual in the Corvette when I went to visit Mom. That and I couldn't listen to Marty Robbins in the car, going so far as to begrudgingly change the radio station when any of Robbins' songs started playing. "Big Iron" played at Dad's funeral, and it still strikes a raw nerve.

Back in 2017, I was supposed to go drag racing for Jalopnik and continue on to visit my parents afterwards when I got the bad news. Dad had another stroke, and this would be his last. The next few weeks were a whirlwind of trying to hold it together as my mom was overcome with grief. Mom and Dad took care of each other, each watching out for the others' assorted health conditions as they settled into old age. When Dad died, I needed to make sure Mom could handle things herself from here and I didn't want to add to the chaos. I took a few extra days off when I got home, but I still don't know if I ever really took the time to process my own grief.

Yet here I was with a Corvette for the week, haunted by the memory of Corvette Man. The association was unavoidable. "Dad" and "Corvettes" will forever be together in my brain, no matter how much time has passed. Cool cars were a shared love of ours, even if we disagreed over things like stuffed animals. Mom said we would "walk around the same car several times and look at every nook and cranny" at car shows. I'm guilty of the same thing today when I see one that I like, and possibly worse, given that I sometimes want to crawl underneath.