A warm ocean current flows benevolently from the balmy Caribbean seas somewhere south of the Corvette Fever editorial offices across the Atlantic. This is the Gulf Stream, which keeps the British Isles warmer and wetter than our geographic location deserves. We're on the same latitude as Calgary in Canada, which has a fierce winter. Although we're farther north than any part of the United States except Alaska, we're lucky to have three days of snow in the London area in any winter. We're also unlikely to have more than 10 mornings with icy roads, but it can be wet and foggy for days at a time.
This doesn't prevent our roads from being salted constantly should we be foolish enough to skid. Salt is hygroscopic and collects water from our damp atmosphere, which leaves the surface wet. Arguably, weeks of wet road surfaces and consequent salty spray are just as a dangerous as icy roads, but the real damage is rust the salt encourages in cars.
A Tuxedo Black '66 L79 convertible was my first Corvette, but my second performance car. The first was a '58 Jaguar 3.4 I bought in 1966. It was light and powerful, but had rusted beyond repair before it was 9 years old. My next car was a Canadian-built factory righthand drive '60 Galaxy Sunliner convertible. Hardly rusty and utterly reliable for three years, it turned me forever toward American cars. Apart from an identical Dearborn-built '60 Sunliner I owned in San Francisco in 1968, it was my only Ford.
To own a Corvette at 24 is bliss, but like so many buyers before and since, I thought a fiberglass body meant no rust. My beautiful '66 was just 5 years old in 1971, but rust was flaking off the frame, the trailing-arm seams were expanding with corrosion, and the mufflers had rusty holes. The price was within my reach only because it had no brakes and the pedal touched the floor; on the morning following the purchase I found out why. The bores of the brake calipers were pitted by rust and most of the plastic insulators on the aluminum pistons-which were used only for the first two years-had split and broken off by corrosion.
For the next 5 years, I bled the front brakes every 200 miles and the rears every 400. On a weekend trip from Newcastle to London, it meant roadside bleeding on the way and again on the way home. Eventually, I could do the job in 10 minutes by myself, thanks to automatic bleed valves I fitted to the calipers and an air line from the spare tire to a homemade pressure-bleeding adapter on the master cylinder. If the car had not been the most beautiful thing ever built and powered by the incredible 350hp 11.0:1 L79, just run in and factory fresh, I would have gone back to Fords. Instead I learned to fix it, fell in love with the marque, and owned almost 700 more Corvettes over the next 35 years. While most owners today wouldn't attempt to drive this car daily, it was superb in the snow.
In 1977, I found an advertisement in an American car magazine for Stainless Steel Brakes. I ordered a set of new stainless-sleeved calipers and the problem was fixed permanently. However, the rust in the frame got worse. In 1985, the next owner discovered the frame had broken in half, so he fitted a new one. He still has the car, and the stainless steel-sleeved brakes, installed almost 30 years ago, work perfectly.
To be fair to the manufacturer, the '66 had been under-sealed after two years on the salted roads of New York state, sealing the salt to the frame, which was fatal. If the previous owner had changed brake fluid annually, the brake calipers would probably have lasted longer; but this wasn't mentioned in the '66 owner's manual or recommended in the chassis service manual.
The revolutionary fiberglass body of the '53 Corvette may have promised rust-free motoring, but it took Chevrolet 31 years to deliver it in the C4. In the UK, every vehicle over 3 years has to pass a rigorous Department of Transport test annually. Every aspect of the lighting, steering, brakes, and suspension is tested, and it's rare for a Corvette with the C2/C3 chassis to pass the test the first time. Even with all new components fitted and perfectly adjusted, the '65-'82 parking brake barely passes the rolling road test. Leaky brake calipers, power-steering rams, and control valves also fail the test, as well as the common fatigue cracks in the front and rust in the rear of the frame.
By contrast, the '84-'96 Corvette, with its galvanized uni-frame and all-aluminum suspension, is built to last and walks the test. On our wet winter days, the C4 is pure pleasure to drive, knowing the only damage you can do is slide off the road, on those lovely wide tires that aquaplane too easily. The steering wheel is smaller than the C5's, the wheelbase is 8 inches shorter, and the steering is quicker-geared. This is the Corvette to enjoy on mountain roads or the left-right-left flick through urban roundabouts that substitute for traffic lights when British roads intersect.