At the end of this year I'm thinking of trading in my 2012 V6 Camaro for a V8 of some sort, and at the moment I'm leaning quite heavily towards a Stingray, possibly a Z06 if it works out (unless the 2016 Camaro redesign really blows my socks off). What I would like to plan on doing is custom ordering this car and getting exactly what I want so that I can keep this for a long, long time... e.g. the rest of my life
. For the foreseeable future I'd be using it as my daily driver, and it looks like I put on about 8000 miles a year.
My Camaro is my first car and I'm 24 - I was lucky to find a great job as a software developer during college. My family has always had cars that we drove to the point of failure and then replaced - ergo, nothing special, and nothing that we went to great lengths to keep healthy in the long term (though I'm very impressed by any car that can put on 220,000+ miles before we have to call it quits!). Of course if I planned on keeping this car I'd do my darnedest to keep the maintenance up, but the idea of trying to maintain a car for a long time is kind of new to me. I'd like to know what your more experienced thoughts are on this matter.
I'd lean towards a 2LT Z51 Automatic (yes... I know...) with magnetic ride control. I figure asking these kinds of questions about the Z06 is a bit premature at this point, though any thoughts on that, especially the long term survivability of such a supercharged engine, would be appreciated as well.
- Do you guys feel like a Stringray is the kind of car that, if well maintained, could survive for 40+ years, or is that a bit of a pipe dream? I figure at some point I'd get another car as my daily driver years down the road, but I see myself driving this quite a bit even if it does get superseded as my daily driver in another 7-10 years or so.
- What are your thought on this as a daily driver and only car (at least for a few years)?
- Would extra features, such as magnetic ride control, and all the electronics that are a part of the base car for that matter such as the dash screens, keyless entry and so forth, be an overriding concern that would make the long term maintainability of this car something to worry about? It worries me a bit how hard it is to maintain cars from the 60's that are far less complicated, and a friend of mine at work recently had her car fail where the part replacements were very difficult to find and pretty expensive, and it was just a Honda station wagon from the 90's. Albeit, she just fixed up her '67 Mustang and is using that as her car now...
I'll probably remember more questions, but these are the ones that have been in my mind as I consider this proposition. Thanks for your consideration!