[1]Self expression is a funny thing. No matter who the person is, everyone has a slightly different way of expressing themselves. While some people prefer to express themselves through things like the way they dress, tattoos, body jewelry, and artistic pursuits, there is a huge percentage of the population that prefers to express themselves through their car.
Ever since the first cars rolled off of Henry Ford’s assembly line, owners have been looking for ways to personalize their vehicles and make them their own. For these people, self expression through what kind of vehicle they have – and more importantly how they modify their vehicle, is everything to them. Unlike many enthusiast groups, there is a very strong emotional reaction Corvette enthusiasts get from the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with turning an originally stock vehicle into something that really turns heads.
The road to vehicular self expression is not necessarily the least expensive form of self expression, but for diehard enthusiasts, price is not a factor.
[2]Diehard enthusiasts are usually pretty passionate about their opinion on what looks good and what doesn’t. To this point, this week we asked our readers to weigh in on what they would do to Kelly Fromm’s 2014 C7 Corvette if they were to buy it from him tomorrow. For those that don’t know, we recently did a car feature [3] on Kelly Fromm’s C7 which is a truly unique wide-body-equipped C7 that undoubtedly turns heads (we know this for a fact as we have driven it). It’s a stunning car sitting still and even more-so when in motion. With our opinion’s aside, we wanted to know what our readers would do differently to it – if it was theirs.
In order to gauge our readers, we used one car (Fromm’s C7) to see the difference of opinion when we asked them on Facebook [4], “If this was your car, what would you do to it?” These are some of the best responses.
- On the overwhelmingly positive side of the spectrum, we had one reader respond by saying, “I’d probably spend an unreasonable amount of time cleaning, polishing, and waxing it… The neighbors would be talking and it might reach the point of obsessiveness that the guys in white jackets could show up in my driveway.” As fellow Corvette enthusiasts, we can understand his desire of wanting to keep the C7 clean – especially considering it’s almost a sacrilege to have a dirty Vette. From his response, it seems like he would just love the car and really not do much to it – other than keep every speck of dirt off of it.
[5] - Some of our readers had rather surprising responses saying they would sell the car to get something else. For instance, we had one reader who wanted to trade the car in on a Lancer or a GTR – a rather surprising response for a strictly-Corvette magazine! Another similar reader wanted to trade in the wide-body C7 for a C6 Z06 – at least the model of car is in the right direction!
- We had numerous responses from people who clearly love to modify their vehicles as a symbol of self expression. A very ambitious reader responded by saying he would take the C7 and a bundle of $25,000 cash and drop the car off at Lingenfelter [6] – you’ve got to admit this really is a great idea, who wouldn’t love having up to 1,000 hp in this thing? For the cosmetic-focused crowd, we had a few readers say they would either like to paint the car a color other than blue, or add some different color wheels to the existing blue exterior.
- There was a good portion of our readers that expressed the desire just to drive the car, as is. One reader just wanted to,”Show it off to my hometown and then run away,” and another wanted to “Live in it.” For these readers, it appears that their main focus is getting the feel of the open road and being seen in the car – who can blame them?
[7]While most people seemed to love the car, we were expecting someone to chime in about the rear-end of the Vette, and sure enough, someone did. The rear-end, and mainly taillight section, of the C7 Corvette has received criticism since the GM [8] designers went away from the four circular taillights that have become one of the distinguishing features of Corvettes. With the new square taillights that resemble other GM cars, one of our readers responded by saying, “Definitely redesign that rear-end! I hate it! I always though Corvettes should have circular taillights.”
As we learned, even with the exact same car as the platform, our readers have a wide range of opinions on how they would express themselves through the car. Despite this, at the end of the day, everyone is a huge fan of Corvettes in general – and that’s what makes Corvette enthusiasts such a great group of people!
Until next week, checkout our Facebook [4] page for our next Readers Poll!