Fall 2013 Corvette Show at Garden State Plaza

The second and final Class Glass 2013 Corvette Show in Paramus, New Jersey:

The Ultimate Top 10 Dream Garage

Earlier today, Jalopnik asked the question of all questions for "gearheads": if you could have a garage containing any five cars in the world, regardless of price and exclusivity, what would they be?  I struggled to narrow my list down to five, so why not expand to 10?  So that's what this is.  Here's my top 10.  Feel free to comment below or tweet your top 10 to me.


#10: Ford GT

Every American motor racing fan during the 1960s knew about the legendary Ford GT40 race car.  That car defeated the mighty Ferrari's at Le Mans, and established its place in racing history in the process.  In 2003, Ford decided to recreate the GT40 and produce it as a road car.  The result was this, the Ford GT.  Just over 4,000 GT's were produced.  The production car became the fastest such American car ever produced as a base model.  The GT's mid-engine V8 produces about 550 horsepower, reaches 212 miles per hour and looks incredible.  Several American classics have been recreated, such as the current Mustang, Camaro and Challenger, but none of them can match the overall brilliance of the Ford GT.  And to think that it's based on a car from almost half a century ago.





#9: 2013 SRT Viper

The Dodge Viper has been the American "dream car" since it debuted in 1992.  The Viper was designed to be simple, like the Shelby Cobra, yet its styling made it bolder and crazier than the cheaper Corvette.  In other words, the Viper is America's Lamborghini.  Dodge stopped building the SRT10 generation Viper, but the company announced the re-birth of the Viper under the SRT name.  The result is simply stunning.  It looks like no other American car ever has and it will probably perform like no other American car ever, yet it still contains a huge V10.  The venom is back and better than ever.  I always thought the late '90s-early '00s Viper GTS was the greatest Viper...until this one.  This is the best Viper ever, which means it's America's best dream car ever.

 

 

#8: Ferrari 458 Italia

 

When the Ferrari 360 was out, nobody thought Ferrari would be able to improve on it.  They did.  But once the F430 came out, nobody thought that could ever be improved upon.  You know what?  They did again.  Someday, they'll improve upon the 458, but until then, the ultimate 21st century sports car is the Ferrari 458.  It's the best looking and best sounding car in the world right now.  It still has the beautiful V8 behind the driver and all of the technology Ferrari could possibly come up with.  Of course, people who read Jalopnik regularly are constantly being reminded that these cars have had electrical problems causing fires in the past, but hopefully that's all it is: in the past.  The thing is, even if you owned one and were scared to ever drive it, at least you could pull a chair up in front of it and just stare it all day.

 

Preview: 2014 Corvette C7 - Hit or miss?

As a lifelong Corvette fan, I decided it would be appropriate to dedicate this blog's inaugural post to be about...yes, you guessed it: the 2014 Corvette C7.  Of course, since it doesn't exist yet, I can't go out and see it or drive it.  In fact, nobody really knows what it'll even look like yet (unless you work for General Motors, in which case please go ahead and tell us everything you know about the C7!), so this whole post is essentially speculation.  So welcome to the blog and thanks for reading (or at least making it this far).

Pictured: variations of the C6 Corvette, the car that is about to expire.

Over the past 60 years, the Corvette has evolved from an almost failed experiment to America's premier sports car.  There were several growing pains along the way, as with many cars, but now, as the sixth generation Corvette (C6) has been around since 2005, it has become an elite performance sports car.  Now the time has come for another update.  The seventh generation (C7) Corvette is coming.  What should be expected with the new 'Vette?  How is General Motors prepared to kill the C6 and make the new Corvette even better?

Unfortunately, fuel economy is the primary focus of almost every car maker in the world right now, and for good reason.  Since most of the general public is obsessed with how many miles per gallon they're getting in their car, car companies should be focusing on what the public demands (umm, yeah...something like that).  As the cost of gas continues to rise, this likely won't be going away anytime soon.  This has also directly impacted the world of sports cars.  Since most sports cars are either a part of a major car maker or owned by one, the parent companies are so focused on fuel economy that there's been less time and money to develop the cars that us sports car fans really care about, because I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you're probably not a fan of the Toyota Prius.