Corvette C5 (Sports Car Color History)

Great Corvette book,Great C5 Book By Patrick Paternie, Lots of Information,Color Photos, Development on the car up to the Last year!2004. and C5-R! Including Le Mans Special Edition(Blue) C5-R'S! Great Book for any Corvette Fanatic!

I had a great time reading this book. The technical information was solid with the exception of a few minor details. The text is well laid out along with imagery on almost every page. I would defiantly recommend this book or current or soon to be C5 owners.

Informative, but not boring, and a great look at the C5 in all its many trials and tribulations. A great bookend for "All corvette are red" I highly recomend it to any C5 fan.

At this writing, in late 2004, there are a number of books about the 1997-2004 "C5" Corvettes out there. One of the best and also my favorite is All Corvettes are Red by the late, Jim Schefter. It's a great history of the design and development of the C5, however, "ACR" is a traditional, hardcover title with only a few photos. Patrick Paternie's C5 Corvette is a nice companion for Schefter's book in that it's a sort of executive summary of what's in ACR but with a little more technical depth, especially on the C5's engines and, most importantly, it has a lot of photos, mainly from GM's Media Archive and noted automotive photographer, David Newhardt. On my Corvette bookshelf, these two are kept next to each other. One thing C5 Corvette has that All Corvettes are Red does not is a chapter on the C5-R race program. Additionally, where Schefter's book ends with the 1997 model year, Paternie's book covers all the way until the platform ended production at the end of the 2004 model year. These qualities of the book were more reasons why I've added C5 Corvette to my collection. The book's only weakness is the author's misunderstanding of some aspects of the C5's suspension. The technical discussion of that contains several errors, particularly in areas where the Author tries to cover a key, C5 chassis design feature: the decoupling of ride-and-handling through specific suspension bushing placement and design. As a whole, C5 Corvette reads easy, is an interesting story of the '97-'04-car's design, development and production, is delightful to look at and is a worthwhile addition to any late model Corvette enthusiast's reference collection

This book is a nice "bookend" to all the C5 books that came out when the car did, now that the car is nearing the end of its production life--this one has all kinds of stuff in it about how the car changed during its production and the racing history of the car. As a C5 fan, I think it's a necessary purchase.