My. Decision would be based on if you needed a car with back seats or not.

My biggest problem with Mustangs is the relatively small exterior changes.
I will be honest I don't know how to tell the difference of them all.
But not a day goes by that I don't see a v6 with cobra saleen etc badges or gt's rebadged.

About the worst you can do with a c5 is badge a frc a z06 or a anniversery.

Mostly my DD's and family cars have all been Ford's.
Never had a desire to own a Mustang, been in love with Corvettes since I was 10.
If it is a toy and for pleasure follow you heart .......
I am baised to Corvettes, and LOVE my C5.

Good luck with your decision

If you live in a snow climate you need another car besides the Corvette for those days.

I live in Scottsdale AZ. What's this "snow" you speak of?

Not necissarily (Sp?). Our C5's are very adept in snowy conditions. I know from extensive experience!!!!!!!

DSTURBD

When we bought our first Vette my wife was looking for a convertible sports car. The Vette was not one of the original considerations and the Mustang was never considered. We drove a bunch of cars and had no clearer idea of what we wanted. She had seen an 2000 convertible so we drove over to take a look. It had some mods, catback, headers, some non stock wheels. We cranked it and the HUD came up, the exhaust rumbled and she was hooked on Vettes. We found an 01, black on black convertible in three days. We since bought a 68 coupe and my plan is to have from now on. Kinda like a bumper sticker I saw, "It's a Vette thing, you wouldn't understand."

I have owned both cars and in my opinion they are two different animals,and i prefer the vette, I have never had a problem with my 99,I would suggest however that you look for a low mileage 6spd,they come with shorter rear gears and still get great gas mileage for a sports car.

I think your first post was pretty accurate.

The C5 is not that expensive to drive and maintain. The gas and insurance are better than most would expect.

The real big expense over other cars is the tires. Especially if you get better than stock ones, you're looking at $200/tire minimum.

The rest of the stuff isn't that bad. Yeah there are some corvette-specific parts, but at its heart it just has a GM LS1, one of the most common engines on the road. Easy to find parts for it for the most part.

The other big thing is that you'll want to keep it in very good shape. If the seats start showing wear, you'll want to replace the seat leather. If the floormats wear out, you'll want new floor mats. You'll want to repair deep scratches and major paint chips.

I think part of the cost of ownership of this car is just that you tend to have a high pride of ownership. If I owned a Honda Accord, I wouldn't be very inclined to wax it every weekend. On my c5, I make sure its always spotless - mechanically and cosmetically.

I am very familiar with both of the vehicles the OP is considering, as my current 2003 Corvette Convertible replaced a 2007 Mustang GT Convertible that was purchased new. The reason I got rid of the Mustang was that after less than four years of ownership the car had serious quality and durability issues.

The following items had to be replaced:

-Passengers bucket seat. The leather was very loose and sloppy. The dealership attempted to replace the leather cover only and it looked so bad that they eventually just pulled a bucket seat out of a new car that was on the lot and replaced it under warranty.

-Factory alloy wheels. All 4 wheels had to be replaced due to corrosion in the first year of ownership, again replaced under warranty.

-Hood. The hoods on these cars are aluminum. The front lip of the hood developed two nickel sized paint bubbles due to corrosion, after approximately 16 months under warranty. A year after the hood was replaced the new hood also began to corrode on the underside.

In addition, there was rust and corrosion everywhere on the chassis and under the hood. It seemed that every fastener had rusted in a 3 year period.

Now to be fair, I do live on a barrier island, approximately a block away from the Atlantic Ocean. But I never experienced the corrosion problems with other cars that I've owned here that I experienced with the 07 Mustang. We've lived here just over 11 years now and in that time have had two previous Mustangs (a 95 GT Conv and a 96 Cobra Conv), 2 Nissans (a pickup and a Maxima, 2 Chrysler products (a Sebring Conv and a Magnum), and a Chevy Blazer. This corrosion problem was limited to the 07 Mustang.

As for how the two cars compare, the Corvette is the hands down, most fun car I've ever owned. It's better built, gets better mileage, is much more fun to drive and just has much more of a "wow" factor. The nice thing about the C5 is that the average person has no idea that they are as old as they are. You'll get compliments on one all the time. I've taken my Corvette on several long trips and find it to be a very comfortable long distance cruiser. Since we're empty nesters I haven't found the lack of a back seat to be a limitation.

As you have noticed the tires are more expensive, but there are ways to minimize the expense (go with non-runflats and get them from someplace like Tirerack). These cars do have a lot of electronics in them and as they get older they are somewhat prone to electrical gremlins. Many problems are caused by grounding issues, and there's a real good sticky on the Tech page on how to clean the grounds under the hood.

I've only had one problem that I couldn't repair myself based on tips that I picked up on this forum. The steering wheel position sensor started to cause the cruise control to disengage on its own. I needed to get it fixed right away because I was taking the car on a 2,000 mile round trip the following week. The local dealer had the part, so I bit the bullet and had them change the part on a Friday, and left on my trip as scheduled the following Monday. As an aside, while on that trip I logged an honest to goodness 31.67 MPG tankful of gas on the interstate with the cruise set at 72 MPH. Aside from new tires, everything else has been reasonably low cost and easy to do myself.

If it were me, based on my experience with both cars, I'd go with the Corvette. Hope this helped.

The C5, if properly taken care of, is a pretty reliable platform. I've had my '03 for 3.5 years now and have not spent anything other than the cost of oil changes, fluid changes and new tires on the car (mods excluded :lol:). And depending on what tires you buy, you can get a complete set for around $600-700 dollars (that's what I paid for my Hankook Ventus V12 EVOs).

I drove Mustang GTs for years till I finally just got tired of them and realized I wanted a Vette. After several years I found the ONE for me and bought it. The immediate difference was the Vette was MORE fun to drive, had more bells and whistles, more public and private appeal. The stunning thing was my insurance (full coverage) went DOWN on the Vette and I get better gas mileage on top of that.

i've owned both, and hondas and jeeps

lot of people aren't so narrow minded sir

as for the op. get a c5 but buy a 2001-2004. you can find a nice higher mile coupe under 15k in the late years. all kinds of improvements happened in 2001. personally i would never consider buying a 97-00. they just aren't that much cheaper to justify how much you lose vs an 01+

c5 pricing will take you a minute to get use to. if you just scan ads one day you'll think cars are selling for more than they really are. most of what you see is stuff that isn't selling. watch the market for a few months, the good deals go fairly quick. there's really no reason you couldn't get a well taken care of 2001 coupe with 100k on it for 13,000

the only caveat to the c5 is factory parts support goes away next year. that means gm will liquidate c5 parts just like they did with c4 stuff in 2006.

the mustang won't have this problem, but, if you keep the car 5 years i would bet on the mustang devaluing more.

lol I've owned 2 Mustang's and was considering buying a new GT 5 years ago, but the Corvette was cheaper, faster, and better looking and my dream car so I went with the Vette and never looked back. Only thing i had to replace in 40k miles was a noisy idler pully. :thumbs:

Why would you even consider
 

Buying a mustang GT ? Enough said

I purchased my '02 Z06 with about 48k miles a year ago. So far, have spent over $5,000 in repairs. Did a dyno tune also. Differential went south, wheel bearings, steering rack, electrical short on the alternator, now it's in for trans work (it's stuck in reverse).

Compared with my previous '99, I spent maybe half that amount in repairs over a 6 year span.

Good luck. :thumbs:

This is very interesting .... How big of affect will this have?

Not so fast... we had a guy on the CIV forum who put snows on his C4 and ran it all year in Anchorage, AK. Said it was fine as long as the snow wasn't too deep. ;)

It was his only car.

Of my 3 years of owning my '98, I've come to learn, it's about as reliable as any other car. But the kicker is, parts are a little more expensive, and it usually takes about twice as long to do any type of maintenance. My most recent has been pulling the drive train twice in the last 6 months for clutch issues. Normally, I can get a tranny pulled, clutch swapped and driving again in about 3-4 hours on a Camaro/Mustang. You would be doing good if you could get the job done in a full weekend on the Vette.

Thanks for the info, something I'll have to consider.

depends on what breaks. the aftermarket will still support mechanical. where it really sucks is when you need a body part if you smack a curb or some plastic interior part breaks. you then have to track one down at the salvage yard.

i had a late c4 that i sold in 2006 and remember looking everywhere to try and find a few parts for it. front impact curb bars, little $25 skid plates were absolutely impossible to find. had a seatbelt seize. took hours of being on the phone to find the right color.