Cross-country in a Corvette Stingray: Conclusion

The final leg of our cross-country Corvette trip took us from Detroit to Charlevoix, Mich. -- about 45 minutes north of our birthplace, Traverse City. Aside from the drivers on I-75 in metro Detroit -- who may be the worst in the world -- and the still-intermittent audio system, the ride was pretty uneventful.

That is, until we exited the freeway onto the somewhat-twisty M-32. The Stingray is great on the freeway, but it really shines on back roads. We hadn't done a lot of off-highway driving since we left Monterey, so the chance to make the brakes and steering work was much appreciated.

Rory Carroll for Autoweek
The C7 should prove popular when it goes on sale this fall.

After that, there was a wedding and a slow drive back to Detroit with our 75-pound mutt in the cargo area. Even with our luggage, he seemed comfortable enough. Somewhere along the way, the audio system started operating normally again. So, what did we learn? First, that this Corvette is a masterpiece. Since the C5, Chevy has been working its way to a Corvette that is more than a great car for the money and is instead just a great car. This C7 is that car. No more apologies about the seats and switchgear, no more “yeah but” -- this is a car that competes with the very best from Germany on every single front, with the possible exception of snootiness -- as good as it is, you won't have to buy special shoes or gloves or scarves to drive one. The only reason GM isn't asking $80,000 for a base Corvette is that Corvette owners would lose their … minds. It's worth every penny of that and a lot more. When you start pricing out other sports cars costing more than $50K, it's hard to make an argument for buying anything else, unless you're just interested in spending money for the sake of feeling fancy. And, with American-made being very much en vogue at the moment, you'll probably get more love in younger, hipper circles driving the new, exotic emblem of everything that's still right with America than you would pushing some Teutonic totem of boomerdom. As much as we adore the new Cayman S -- and some of us are positively sick for it -- it'd be hard to recommend spending more to get one, unless you absolutely had to have something German.

Rory Carroll for Autoweek
If you want to see the US, you'll need a car. Why not a Corvette?

The other thing we learned is that no matter how screwed up America is at any given moment, it's still break-your-heart gorgeous, and you can still go out and look at it.

Rory Carroll for Autoweek
A little light offroading in the 2014 Corvette Stingray.

The last time we crossed the country, we spent a lot of time stopped at either taking pictures at tourist traps or fixing the two hoopties we'd been given to drive. This time, we had to hustle to make it to that wedding. We barely made it off the freeway, but we still saw things that made our cynical jaws drop from our cynical faces. The roads that hang at the edge of the Pacific in Monterey, the Martian wilds of Southern Utah and the mountain passes of Colorado cannot be seen in photos and they can't be seen from a plane. You can't understand the vastness of the Great Plains by looking at a map and you certainly can't get your head around the Great Lakes unless you soak in them. Even in 2013, you still need a car or a motorcycle if you're going to get to know this country face to face. We're just did it in one of the greatest American cars ever made and we'd do it again tomorrow.

You can relive the rest of our journey on Twitter, Instagram and Vine under the hashtag #xccorvette.

By Rory Carroll