This is a compensated sample written for a marketing company I now ghostwrite for. The assignment was to write about a fun topic, particularly the use of a commercial product I am personally enthused about.
Corvette Shows Strength at Long Beach, Monterrey
Of course, we all know the Corvette Team
finished first and second at Monterey. But for my money, if you really want to
know what defines the power of a Corvette, you have to look at Long Beach.
Long Beach 2012 was also a one-two finish
for the Corvette, and it was the most exciting race I’ve ever seen in my life.
Long Beach is special, and it was the
perfect showplace for everything that makes the Corvette the baddest of bada--.
And it’s not just because in the opening
minutes of the race, a Corvette almost put a BMW into the wall and sent the
heavy German mainstay crying to the pits.
It’s the straightaway.
Long Beach is basically a series of drag
races interrupted by a bunch of curves.
All of these cars, Corvettes, Porsches,
Ferraris, BMWs, all fight it out in tight curves that basically give no one in
a high performance car any kind of real advantage, then dump you into a hairpin
turn that slows you down virtually to a dead stop, and opens out into an almost
perfectly straight piece of urban pavement long enough to separate the men from
the boys.
Long Beach has a few straight stretches,
and the longest one isn’t really all that straight, it’s got kind of a bend to
the right. But it’s close enough to straight to be a pure power run, and it
opens out of a hairpin so tight, it seems like a standing start.
And this is where Corvette really shined –
so much so that I was laughing my head off. To see these high-dollar, elite
driving machines line up next to the Corvette for a straight power run, over
and over, and get slaughtered, was breathtaking. It wasn’t even close.
I’ve spent my life around high performance
cars, and around the people who love them. Late nights over beers, arguing the
advantages of a mid-engine air-cooled six, or a high-revving overhead cam four,
and try to tell people over and over – there is no substitute for an American
liquid-cooled V-8. There is no substitute for a deep power well.
And Long Beach showed that. With an
endless series of raw, pure power drag races that all started out basically
even – two cars optimized for racing and speed, lined up next to each other,
with nothing ahead of them but open road.
And then you just floor it.
For a few seconds, maybe a gear or two, it
would seem kind of fair. And then Porsches and Ferraris, cars that can cost a
quarter to a half million dollars apiece, would just run out of power, while
the Corvette ran ahead and kept accelerating like it was going to make the jump
to light speed.
Over and over.
Cars tangled up, running through turns and
tight curves, trying to get an advantage in sharp quarters, testing the
drivers, a full hundred and eighty degree turn that makes your neighborhood
cul-de-sac look like a gentle arc – and suddenly, it’s nothing but open road.
Just hit it, and go flat out.
Again and again, the deep power well of
the Corvette V-8 just took off, leaving the competition behind like they were
stuck in second gear.
And all of this with the Corvette V-8
engine muzzled, stripped of 168 horsepower, to try to make it fair. It was
never fair. They used to make Seabiscuit run with a handicap of over 130
pounds, too. To try to make it fair.
But there is no substitute for strength.
And there is no substitute for a monster
American V-8 with lineage going back more than half a century.
Pure power.
So, the brutal endurance run at Le Mans is
next.
Wrap your a-- in fiberglass, kids.
It’s race time.