grandotitat

Greetings to everyone. I'm starting this thread to share with you how I've been dealing with being a Corvette owner in a place where they are exotics and absolutely uncommon, and how a C5 Corvette is starting a new life. As you might notice from my profile info, I live in Colombia (Not Columbia), South America. A country you might know for good stuff like artists, some sportsmen and women, coffee, or bad things which I don't need to mention, or a country you don't even know. The thing is that in general the life here goes on much more normally than some people may think, and I'm just a random guy who likes cars and motorcycles and eventually got real interest in Corvettes. If you want to know how this happened, please visit my introduction thread to the forum here:

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/c5-general/3557303-am-i-ready-for-a-corvette.html"]***I'M I READY FOR A CORVETTE?***

So, to sum it up, a nice C5 Z06 which I purchased in Orlando is now living in Bogotá, Colombia's capital city and I feel like a rock star even though I haven't even been able to drive it. Is this a constant feeling for Corvette owners? Well, considering that spotting a Corvette here is close to the odds of winning the lottery, I think I have a free pass to feel this way

So, after suffering for almost a month not knowing of my car was not being scratched by port operators, if it was not going to be seized for some kind of stupid customs requirement, if it was going to make it safely from the port city Cartagena to Bogotá, if the transportation guys were going to take care of the height during load and unload, etc, my new car finally arrived at my home and off course I captured the moment:
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Between my happiness, my biggest concern was around the corner. My garage entrance. Two horrible speed bumps and a steep ramp with not much space to enter in angle:








Guess what. The car made it! However, going out is different. The underbody gets scratched as the ramp exceeds the break over angle. I think I'll have to learn with a lot of patience how to get it out from there with no scratches.

So far, almost a month after receiving the car, the bad news is that I have not been able to use it. I'm been having a very unpleasant time trying to obtain my new license plates. The first problem was that the Z06 was not on the national registry list. Yes, this is the first Z06 on the country! (At least C5). So the local equivalent to the US' DMV requested to the Transportation Ministry open such requirement. This have taken days as the request was processed wrong twice. Then I had a problem paying the car taxes because of the same problem but this time I was dealing with the Finance Ministry. So, after getting over this, I was finally assigned a license plate number but guess what... The system didn't allow the car to be registered because the customs inspector filled out wrong the import form and the engine number was duplicated in there, so it didn't matched with the car's imprint.

So at this point, I'm here in my computer living my daily life and writing stuff on the internet with a beautiful Corvette in my garage which I cannot use.

At least I can go downstairs everyday and look at it saying to myself, HEY, this is real! ... Hold on a few days.

So my plans with it are to keep it "almost" stock. The value of this car now here is something around an amount that will allow you to get a brand new C7 Stingray in the US, so my old ideas of turbocharging every car are going away. The whole mods list so far is here:





I'll be updating here as soon as I get to every one of them. And off course I will let you know how this Corvette is being dealing with our horrible city obstacles and fascinated people looking at such head-turning red.

SaxyVette

Cheers from Las Vegas...!!!!

Vetteman Jack

Great story and congrats on getting a C5 Z06 in your home country. Hope everything gets worked out soon and you get to drive the car out on the streets.

Jeff T.

I remember your previous post! Good to see you are ding well with your new ride.

Boxes, we all love those little surprises! Enjoy!!

Choreo

Great story, sounds like quite an ordeal.

Are you actually scraping the underbody or is just the front spoiler dragging? Garage does not look that steep in the photos? My driveway looks steeper than that and my front spoiler drags the ground (as designed), but I have never had the rocker panels hit? Speed bumps can be a problem which is why I have kept my stock height.

Looks like you may scrape right at the top where the driveway meets the street?

One thing you might consider adding to protect the rocker panels are the Elite Engineering frame rails. I added those years ago and they also make jacking the car you much easier/safer...
http://www.eliteengineeringusa.com/c...nd-mtg-screws/

OneCylinder

Gotta hate the bureaucracy, hope you get everything straightened out soon.

dharmadan

Thank you for sharing -- great to be so happy!

xdmikey

I, too, remember your introduction.

Your story is looking up.

I need to tell it to my kids. Kind of a perseverance thing.

Congratulations from Texas.

Koufax

Please keep us up to date. I followed your initial thread with great interest. Congratulations on your success so far. You will be a rock star once you get it on the road.

kabluie

Hola, congrats on getting your car to Colombia in one piece with no scratches. The license will come soon since you already have a plate number assigned. I suggest you get a nice beater to drive when you don't want the attraction issue to get in the way of having fun. Good luck with it. Corvettes are a lot of fun.

laurent_zo6

Great to hear from you again. Keep us posted. For protection so that your front skid plates don't get scratched, you could install the C5 Fangs. Very easy to install.
http://www.saccitycorvette.com/Fangs.html

1bdvet

Nice story, welcome to the world of America's only true sports car.

Fast Cop

Welcome to the madness. Enjoy your new toy, they are alot of fun. And greetings fromt he other Columbia -- South Carolina.

grandotitat

Thank you all guys for the support and encouragement !!! I feel really good sharing all of this in the forum. I remember sometime ago when I posted a video in youtube with a friend's GMC Typhoon and I was really disspointed to read comments such as "keep American cars in America you third world people". But you know, there are jerks all around and there is good people as well (fortunately the great majority).


Absolutely. Boxes=Happiness

The front spoiler always drags when going in or out, but it just bends and goes back to position. I'm actually scraping the rocker panels at the top of the driveway. I remember I already watched those frame rails you recommend, but they seem to be really thick, reducing the ground clearance even more. Anyway I guess they should be thick to withstand heavy scratching. However I think I have figured out the way to get it out without scratching. I have to enter in angle as usual, but just before the underbody hits the top of the driveway, I will let the car slide backwards so I can re position it to exit the driveway in the opposite angle of the entrance. I'll have to see if other city obstacles will require the rails anyway.

Fortunately, my daily driver is a Motorcycle so I can go as a "regular citizen" most of the time. I do want my Corvette to be useful and I don't want it to be a garage queen, but because of my job I require something that allow me to move efficiently around the city and basically no car will allow me that.

Thanks for the advise! Instead of those, I purchased the FattDaddy frame savers. We'll see how they perform.

Joe_A

If you can drive into the garage without scraping. Maybe you can just back out of the garage and avoid the scraping.... Good Luck Have Fun

eevette2001

SO, what did the shipping and taxes cost?

grandotitat

Thanks! Already tried that but it was a fail. The air dam will bend as expected going in, but going in reverse will cause the air dam to bend on the opposite way of the hinges and the sound it made was horrible.

Shipping was around $2000 USD. And the taxes here were 16% of the CIF price.

Mike94ZLT1

$2,000 to get a car from Orlando to Colombia? Wow, I would have thought it would be a lot more than that!

zeevette

What other exotic cars do you see in Bogota? Anywhere to race?

CQRT

Congratulations on getting your beautiful Corvette home. From what I've read and seen on TV, Colombia is such a beautiful country- it will be great to explore the roadways with your new car.

I remember when you were conducting your search for the "perfect" car.

What do you do for work that you're able to ride a motorcycle?

Enjoy !