Driven: Chevrolet Corvette C4

June 28th 2008 by Steven

Imagine a saturday afternoon after lunch, bright sunny weather, around 28 degrees celcius, no wind and a light bronze metallic Chevrolet Corvette C4 from 1983. This car was one of the first European versions of the C4, it’s fully original and has only 66,000 km (41,250 mls) on the clock. We took it out to see how the C4 relates to the modern-day Corvette’s.

From the moment we fired up the engine of the Corvette we knew this would be an amazing afternoon. The sound produced by the 8 liter V8 block is just stunning, imagine what it was back in 1983. Indeed, the American dream! To enjoy the sound and weather even more we took off the roof. Ofcourse we were not dealing with some modern automatic folding roof but with an easily removable hard-top that finds a place in the boot. With the roof down there’s zero room for luggage but especially in these days a car like this won’t be used for heavy transport or long trips anyway.

We were suggested to take it easy; very reasonable for a car that drives way less than it deserves. When the engine finally reached the right temperatures we could test how direct the 205 bhp were going to the back wheels via a 4-speed automatic clutch. This was mainly because back in the eighties there was nothing like traction control. To be honest, this is exactly what makes a car exiting! We were only on the road for 5 minutes and a few things got to our attention. Many many heads turned around when they heared the deep growl coming around the corner. The sound can be compared with a Grizzly fishing on a Salom, with the last one constantly escaping. Secondly there were the surprisingly nice and comfortable seats. The rest of the interior didn’t have many details worth mentioning except for the control panel which existed only out of digital screens, so no standard speedo- or rpm meter with an arrow.

Later on the drive we found out that having traction control is something that stops you from ‘real’ driving. We got shown that if you push the car too hard in corner the back of the car will be gone easily. But thanks to our nice drivingskills it was no problem at all to get the car under control again. Bad point is, and is probably for every sportscar, the speedbumps. We had to take these ones very slowly… no need to tell you what would have happened if we drove of too fast.

After driving around for few hours we decided to bring the car back to it’s resting place where it got nicely parked in it’s garage. We like to thank car company Shepens for the opportunity to drive this Corvette C4!

High-res pictures can be found in our forum!