1999 Corvette - Jay Leno's Garage

you know the genius in this car it's not the fact that they can build it the fact that they can build it for the price that they do all the excitement of driving and handling if you get in fancier cars for just about a tenth of the price if not less than that anybody that works hard saves you defense welcome an episode of jay leno's garage non-pandemic edition we have our crew back uh we're still under kind of limited lock down but it's loosening up so things are getting better okay speed of getting better the car featuring today 1999 c5 corvette you know this is a fantastic car let me tell you how this came to be back in 1999 i was given the honor of driving the uh the pace car at the indy 500 which is uh just a huge thrill i mean it's pretty exciting you got like half a million six hundred thousand people in the stands and i think the car was monte carlo uh and uh you know it's kind of fun i love to do this kind of stuff and they were telling me well the celebrity wanted this much money and this celebrity wanted this much money and i said well i'll do it for free i guess sure it's an honor they said real oh okay so okay so i get there and uh they were very grateful and uh i said uh what can we do for you and i said i like to get paid in product that's pretty good i like gm products and this was a demonstrator car uh it was not new when i got it it had about 2500 miles on it something like that it was one of those cars the first time you see it it just looks right it just sits right you know something about the way a car has a stance like posture and people some people you go what's wrong with that guy whereas this thing it just looked right i like the color i like the gray and the c5 was a huge improvement over previous corvettes the c5 was almost discontinued by general motors because i thought how many carvers do we actually sell is it worth keeping this you know luckily the engineers at corvette just kept their heads down and their nose of the grindstone and kept working and didn't pay much attention to the corporate bosses and they come out with this this is a i think the c5 ran from i think 97 to 2004 has the ls1 engine 345 horsepower also became the z06 6-speed transmission heads-up display disappearing headlight you know what's so funny you can buy these now for between 15 and 20 grand c5s and it's the greatest performance bargain there is for the money i mean this has as much power if not more than the equivalent aston martin in period or or even the the the two-seater ferraris that were available they weren't much more powerful than this yet this was something that was bulletproof it just runs and runs uh buddy of mine's got one over 90 000 miles on it just nothing wrong with them you know this ls1 engine is legendary it's been put in everything since then and they just run forever it has also i think it's the first year or the the first corvette rather to have the trans axle up to this point you had the engine transmission connect to the engine drive shaft rear end this has got a what is it the bog warner i think it is six-speed uh transmission which is just fantastic and it's got the heads-up display which is pretty revolutionary back in the day back in the 90s the c5 was the first to have it at first people thought of some kind of general motors gimmick you know but it's really fighter plane technology it puts up on the screen so and you can see right through it all the vital information tachometer speedometer oil or whatever you want and they're just just great you know the fun thing about this car is if you had to have quote a family two-seater car or a practical or sensible two-seater car this is it you've got this huge trunk you can go to home depot wherever you want and put lumber in the back of this thing i've seen guys do that and it really makes me laugh you got a tremendous amount of luggage space this is the kind of car you can take a trip in and just fill it to the gills here and you're fine of course it's fiberglass as you all know you have four-wheel disc brakes this was the last corvette to have the pop-up headlights it's one of the last cars that pop headlight pop-up headlights were big in the 80s and the early 90s and by the end of the run this was just about the last but i like them i like them in this it keeps the coefficient of drag down i think it's 0.29 for this car which is amazing you know it's aerodynamic it's well engineered and it was a sensibly priced car you know i sometimes get annoyed at the european manufacturers who make a half a dozen of one model and it's hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars corvette through superior engineering and manufacturing technique can make an equivalent car and sell it for under a hundred thousand dollars and somehow that doesn't make it as good because it's more expensive that makes it and it isn't this this is the equal of any car they've won le mans a bunch of times in them uh they're just great and of course the new c8 is really the technological tour de force they've done an amazing job on that you know i tashedner and the whole gang there at uh at corvette they they uh they're real engineers and that's what's fun about general motors now general motors is a real engineering company mark royce the president of the company he's an engineer i mean he seems to be at nurburgring every week with cadillac's and every other kind of car trying to break records and set times and uh it's really fun to see you know the days of badge engineering where you have you know a decal stripe package and some kind of stupid wheel and drum brakes now it's all engineering all the time and it's really saying it started with this car this is such a leap ahead of the c4 corvette and technology uh the coolest thing is the frame it's what they call a hydroforming they take aluminum that i guess they're 13 feet long and they force water through it at 7 000 pounds per square inch to bend it it makes it incredibly strong so a lot of early corvettes you get this kind of rattling a little bit with the fiberglass and the dashboard doesn't happen in this this was such an improvement over previous corvettes and the fact that the engine is so under stress 350 horsepower isn't very much today but in 1999 that was pretty powerful uh that was a fast car don't forget there was no car that had more except maybe the viper the viper was 400 horsepower and then 450 horsepower so and then corvette came out with zr1 and you know that whole deal but when it was introduced it was an amazing car and uh i drive it a lot i said about all my cars but i do drive them all on you know the nice thing about living in california you won't have salt on the roads and if you just use a minimal amount of care you can keep a car like this looking i mean to me this looks like still looks like a brand new car to me maybe i'm getting old my eyes are going but it still looks great it handles great this has the see because of hydroforming those frame rails because of that they're able to make this target top this roof pops up this actually the roof has never been off i i've got convertibles i want a convertible i'll drive one but but it's nice and it's it's watertight it seals i've never had a leak in this thing and because of those hydroformed chassis parts you're able to make a car that's so stiff you can remove the roof without giving up any structural integrity which is which is good the only thing this has optional i guess is the chrome wheels that's the only thing they came with those chrome wheels and uh i don't know if i would have ordered them but i like them now and they look fine as one of our staff was pointing out no road rash no scraping the curb 20 years nothing actually more than 22 years so there you go so that's pretty good uh what else let's open the hood and show you what the engine looks like i see it still looks pretty nice in here we use a lot of those well i got my own line of car care products we use the jswell j little tire and trim package but it does keep all this black plastic looking shiny and new the only thing i've done is change out the battery put we like optimas because they don't leak gas they don't they don't give off any sort of uh you know how you sometimes you come to a battery and it's all corrosion you don't get any of that here there's no leaking gas there's no fluids to leak out and they seem to last on an average for me about 10 years i mean i've got a couple of duesenbergs in there and i think some of the batteries say 2009 on them and they're they still work fine you know we keep them all on the ctec chargers ctek seems to be the best sometimes you get these cheap chargers that you buy it uh you know just a cheap you know car part store or no-name battery tender or whatever it is and those have a tendency to boil the battery the real good chargers will charge the battery up to about 85 percent and then it shut off and leave a little window there so you don't over charge the battery which can burn it out just as is do as much harm as not having it on there at all okay this is the 5.7 liter engine you know i've never done anything to this really not even changing plugs i mean it's fine it runs i change the oil every 3000 miles i know they say you can go a lot more than that but i'm sort of old school i mean i look at the oil and if it or it looks bad i change it as simple as that same thing with brake fluid uh we always change the brake fluid if not every year certainly every 18 months and two years max it doesn't get uh you know here in california you'll get that high hydroscopic effect of water in the bright flow because we don't have hot and cold and humidity up and down so but still it's good to check your brake fluid as often as possible let's see how look at that see that nice clean oil look at this see there you go man of my word here's the true gar guy when you get car when you get oil in your car you wipe with your hand and then just wipe it on your pants that's what car guys do because better your pants are filthy than your car really well i don't have to explain that to you you've seen the way i dress fuse boxes here just a well laid out car just nicely done and you can pick these up for probably fifteen thousand dollars fifteen to twenty grand for a really nice twenty year old more than twenty twenty three twenty four year old car like this let's open up the back something that shows its age the old-fashioned key first of all you have a key which you say to teenagers a key for the car what's that no fob no it's a key and you got this kind of old-fashioned looks like something you get with a pong game but hey part of the romance really good-sized trunk i mean that's pretty amazing look at the size of that it's amazing how much you can get in here these are really practical fun cars and built extremely well what else is on this oh i think that's custom exhaust system and of course the round taillights love round tail lights all sorts of controversy over the new corvette you know a lot of old guys i'm not buying one doesn't have round tail lights well i'm not trying to sell it to you i'm trying to sell it to a younger guy but uh it doesn't bother me but just i mean it's hard to believe this car is 20 years old it drives it handles let's uh take it for a spin foreign you know the genius in this car it's not the fact that they can build it the fact that they can build it for the price that they do you know look i love all these multi-million dollar hyper cars but let's face it we have an unlimited budget you can get the biggest engine and the finest transmission the best brakes and if cost be damn and it's not an issue well you can put them all together and build a supercar not that that's easy but it's easier trying to do it for under a hundred thousand dollars it's pretty amazing i mean i've got a uh a zr1 actually serial number one when the new one came out in 2009 640 horsepower 60. just unbelievable there was nothing like it at the time and barely is now i mean they just do an amazing job and the new c8 is a culmination of all of that thinking it's just unbelievable to me how they can build that car for sixty thousand and sell it for sixty thousand dollars and they do you know everybody says oh they're gonna jack up the price there might be some deals that do but i do know people that have gotten them for sticker and i think that's uh gm is to be commended for that i love the heads up display love the dashboard layout everybody complains of the corvette the interiors look cheap chintzy and cheap i don't think they do and they look fine i mean of course not it's not going to be what you'd get in a pagani or something of that nature but hey i'll take the extra bucks and buy a beach house this has active handling those of them put the window up there's a bus next to me those are things that kind of give away the age you know britain that says active handling warming up you know nowadays it just engages but it's okay impressive car as i said i've had this car 22 years still looks as good as the day i got it you know i just wipe down the dash occasionally and use some uh protectorates on the plastics and whatnot and she's fine i remember a while back we did a video of my uh firebird my 2002 fiber that has this same engine [Music] i think i called that a four-seater corvette at the time which which it is and the one area where i think a corvette beats all the european exotics is heating and air conditioning i mean it's uh you know it's the same stuff that goes into cadillacs and chevy's they build a gazillion of these a year they know how to do it i've never had a uh an air conditioner to go out on a gm car the heater for that you know for years corvette was just hanging by a thread at gm you know the accountant's gonna actually keep it i don't know we don't make that much we make more selling chavettes and all that kind of nonsense yeah but i think now they realize the value of the brand you know i was uh in europe in germany and i had a c5 just like this one same color and i drove it on the autobahn it was funny because everybody else all the bmws and mercedes-benz they had a self-imposed limit at 155 but the corvette didn't and i was past those guys at 172 173 it was just a fantastic time and the corvette was rock steady germany is a great place to drive the car like the corvette i went to nurburgring but i didn't drive the corvette at nurburgring i drove uh jaguar what was that the xkr was that what it was uh you know the one with the v8 i think my best time was 8 41. which wasn't bad for a street totally street car did okay and that was what that was 20 years ago the other great thing about the corvette is it gets surprisingly good mileage i don't think it's ever dropped below 18 under any circumstances maybe it has but i couldn't say that for certain but an average is between 18 to 27 and when you put it in let me put it in six what am i turning here okay 50 miles an hour i'm totally 1200 rpm it's barely off of idle nothing about it it's a truly egalitarian car you know anybody that works hard and saves you pennies can get one of these maybe not a brand new one but like i said these go for between 15 and 20 grand something like that [Music] in fact two of my favorite sports cars and it doesn't seem like they're related but they are the miata the mx-5 and the corvette because they're both essentially cars the average person a little bit of success a little bit of luck canon and you all the excitement of driving and handling that you get in fancier cars for just what a tenth of the price if not less than that they've just built so many corvettes i mean if this was some limited edition vehicle this thing would be you know a couple of hundred grand but because they built so many of them the average person can can hopefully own one day okay 60 miles an hour i am turning 13 1300 rpm i mean that's got to be incredible for mileage it's late in the day here in los angeles it's what it's 2004 and we're just starting to hit bumping above the traffic so we really can't take this out and do what it can do plus i can watch like a hawk now so in the case of the big burnouts and could be numbered yeah but anyway i just wanted to tell you about these corvettes you know sometimes people get a little snobby they think oh yeah i only like ferraris only like this i like any car that does its job well is fun to drive attractive to look at and has technically interesting facts and this has all of those it has an engine that's bulletproof you know everybody makes fun of the v8 oh it's it's uh low tech yeah but the cool thing is you know your camshaft is down low in the block you don't have a lot of weight up high you know you put a twin cam head on this thing and all of a sudden you're a center of gravity i love the silver's blowing up put my arm out that's the one thing i don't like about the new camaro such a high s i'm doing that all the time another fun thing about corvettes is there is so much aftermarket stuff oh my god i mean 350 you can go to 400 450 horsepower every conceivable hot rod option is available for this motor it really is one of the greatest cars in the world for value for performance for looks it really succeeds on every single level that's what i love about it you know it's so funny as i got older i watched the demographic for the corvette get old uh and i think that's why they came out with the mid-engine because they realized younger people have grown up with the mid-engines they understand that engines are better handling cars you get the power down quicker more efficiently uh whereas a lot of you know i i enjoyed it when the ca was first introduced a lot of the guys in my age i'm never buying another car but it's supposed to be front engine they they broke it you know yeah yeah i wonder why checker cab went out of business you know the same thing i mean they weren't afraid to update and make it something a little bit more exciting a little more modern uh i mean it's fascinating to me that the base corvette that you could buy the sixty thousand dollar one is now faster and accelerates harder let's shoot at 60 miles an hour than last year's zr1 i have to admit it makes me proud that american cars can now compete on an equal footing with a lot of the european stuff you know mustangs camaros corvettes i mean they've all become so much better than what they were you know anyway listen i hope you uh enjoyed the drive in this corvette if you've never driven a corvette boy don't pass up the opportunity maybe rent one for a day i think you'd be impressed with just just how good it is you know try to stay away from the haters you know sometimes people just need something for no discernible reason you know to me i love them i think they're great i love the fact that they're affordable i love the fact that the average guy you know maybe you're a plumber or a carpenter or a lineman or something and you work hard you save your money you can buy one of these and enjoy it and keep it hopefully 22 years so 23 years like i did so anyway listen folks i will see you guys uh next week i hope you enjoyed the ride in this seafaring tour that i just wanted to let you know uh how much i like it because sometimes there are cars we just take for granted oh it's a car that you don't realize just how good it is until you actually drive it so see you guys next week bye [Music] ah

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 528,774

Rating: 4.9662538 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Corvette, GM, General Motors, V8, American muscle, sports car, C5, car porn, car nerd, gearhead, Made In America, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, 1999 Corvette, jay leno garage corvette, corvette clean, 1999 corvette Jay leno garage, 1999 corvette review, 1999 corvette top speed, 1999 corvette review JLG, 1999 corvette acceleration

Id: RkMujmun8Jw

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Part_of_the_Charm]

I own the same year model with the targa top. Bought it at 27K miles bone stock for $17K 5 months ago and am currently sitting at 33K including a 1000 mile road trip earlier this year.

I average around 22mpg with a mix of highway and suburbs. It’s my daily and I regularly drive in NYC traffic. I take it out on drives at night when there’s no traffic simply for the joy of driving it. I learned how to drive manual in it and will probably keep it forever.

Aftermarket parts are widely available and the forums has a record of just about everything you need to know about this car. It’s also still pretty active so if you do need anything, the support is there.

Yes, the interior rattles and NVH is basically non existent, but how it drives and sounds more than makes up for it.

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[u/InfinityPlusInfinity]

The C5 is the enthusiast car you want.

-Manual transmission

-Factory LS swap

-hatchback

-RWD

-massive aftermarket

-low mileage examples available for <$15,000

-still quick by today’s standards

-3200lbs

-pop up headlights

“BuT tHe InTeRiOr SuCkS!!1!” Come on it’s not that bad.

[u/NBJ24]

I'm so happy that Jay is able to have his filming crew back. Who doesn't love the footage of the camera panning over the road as the car whooshes by? The amount of work that goes into these videos are amazing (even the ones where Jay can't have his filming crew), and which is why I look forward to the latest "Jay Leno's Garage" every Monday.

[u/GlamGlamGlam]

1999 Corvette happy owner here :) Mine is in Nassau blue.

https://i.imgur.com/4gJ7YDO.jpg

[u/[deleted]]

I was five years old when this car came out and it was the first car I ever thought was cool. I really hope I get to own one someday.