There was a time when a Corvette was a car that a young man man who could afford a new Camaro could aspire to own one day, because the Corvette only cost a few thousand dollars more than a new Camaro. For example, in 1978, a base Camaro listed for $4,414; if you had a little more – $5,603 – you could buy a Z28 Camaro, which was the high performance version of the car and offered power/performance close to that of a Corvette.

At $9,351 to start, the ’78 Corvette was not cheap. But it was also not as expensive as it has become. Base price for the 2026 iteration is $70,000. The last Camaro – which was discontinued after the end of the of the 2024 model year, stickered for $30,900 to start. That’s more than twice as expensive, in case you’re counting – whereas the ’78 Corvette was only about a third more expensive than a Z28 Camaro and neither was anywhere near as expensive as their current/recent iterations, which take four or five times as many dollars to buy. Not many of us are earning six or seven times as many dollars people did in 1978, either. That’s why “inflation” is actually diminishment. You have less buying power because what you are paid (in dollars) is not enough to equal the devalued buying power of the dollar.

Another silent bud deadly killer is the cost of insurance.

Can you guess what it costs to “cover” a new Corvette? And keep in mind, you have no choice about buying this “coverage,” which means the insurance mafia is in the delightful position of being able to tell you just exactly how much you’re going to pay for it.

How about $5,000 annually?

That is the number, according to Kelly Blue Book. It assumes the driver is not under 35 and does not have any “tickets” on his DMV record, which the DMV oh-so-helpfully has given the mafia anytime access to. A “ticket” being considered evidence that you are a “risky” driver and so deserving of even higher insurance costs. Note that this “risk” is just an assertion and entirely predicated upon associations rather than actualities; i.e., it does not matter that you have never wrecked or filed a claim or had a claim filed against you. This actual evidence of actually safe driving is irrelevant. The fact that you got radar-trapped doing the same 80 MPH just about everyone else is driving on a highway with a posted speed limit of 65 is enough to get adjusted to the tune of another 20 percent on top of that $5k annually.

But let’s go with $5k and think about what that means – and costs. Over six years – the duration of an average new car loan – the buyer of a new Corvette will have paid $30k to “cover” the car, a sum equivalent to nearly half the original purchase price. Put another way, the basic ownership cost of a new Corvette – not counting gas and maintenance – approaches $100k. (If you factor in depreciation, it’s well over that.)

No wonder the average age of a new Corvette buyer is close to Social Security-eligible age. The Corvette has become a kind of four-wheeled Harley-Davidson; i.e., a vehicle for the dwindling handful of older guys – it is almost exclusively guys – who can afford to indulge. In both cases, this is both an inversion of tradition as well as a near-guarantee that the end of the road is in sight.

The Corvette used to be America’s sports car and sports cars are almost definitionally for young guys, just as a Harley was once a young guy’s machine (here’s an article about that). The age demographic for both used to be at least 20 and even 30 years younger than it is today. Marlon Brando and Sonny Barger rode Harleys when they were young men. Today it is mostly retired men. It is the same – or nearly so – as far as new Corvette drivers and a metric of that fact is the fact that every new Corvette comes only with an automatic transmission, the transmission for men who have achy knees. Young men who like performance cars generally prefer manuals because they’re much more fun – which is a different thing than how quickly a car can get to 60, by the way.

The new Corvette is, on paper, the quickest and fastest and best-handling Corvette ever. But these are statistics and so mostly taking points. The majority of the older guys out cruising in their Corvettes are doing just that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this; no doubt they are having a good time. But there is no future – for the Corvette – in this.

The new Corvette’s standard 490 horsepower 6.2 liter V8 makes more than twice the power of the ’78 Corvette’s optional 5.7 liter, L-82 V8 and completely outclasses its ancestor in every statistical way, other than what it costs and how few are sold.

In 2025, Chevy sold 17,718 Corvettes. In 1978, the figure was 46,766 – or more than twice as many, at a time when the population of the United States was about 100 million fewer than it is today. 

Chevy arguably made a big mistake when it decided to make the Corvette into an exotic car, with a mid-engined layout and a price that, while less than a Ferrari’s, is effectively the same since most young guys and not many middle-aged guys can afford either one.

America’s Sports Car is now an old man’s car – and there are inevitably fewer of them every year. In time, that presages fewer new Corvettes.

Until one day, there are no more because there’s no one left who wants or can afford one.

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