After a 37-Year Wait, a 2022 Chevrolet C8 Owner Says His Stingray Has Already Carried 57 Passengers, and One of Them Was His Dad’s Final Ride Before He Passed

There is something unmistakably American about a kid staring at a Corvette in a suburban driveway and deciding, right then, that one day he will own one. It is not rational. It is not financially sound. It is the sort of vow made by eight-year-olds who have no idea what compound interest is but understand perfectly what it feels like when a car flips a switch in their brain. Fold that moment into a holiday built around gratitude and memory, and you get a story that feels tailor-made for Thanksgiving. This year, one C8 Stingray owner used a Facebook group not to brag about lap times or options, but to explain why he is thankful for a car that took 37 years to reach his driveway.

Roy D. Foster posted his story in the C8 Corvette Stingray Owners Facebook group with the kind of specificity that makes you feel like you are walking beside him in 1985. His full account reads:

"Little backstory...

My parents divorced when I was 8 in 1982, and I went w/ my Dad, who left the house to my Mom and 2 older sisters.

We then lived in an apartment for the next 5 years as he saved for a house. 

We'd walk in adjacent neighborhoods, and one day in the Summer of 1985, we saw a new red C4 in a driveway, and the owner was washing it.  I couldn't believe my eyes, nor how wide the rear tires were!

My Dad wasn't shy and asked, "How much did this beauty cost you?" and when the owner said, "Right at $24,000," my Dad yelled, "That's almost what I make in a year!"

I told myself then that I'd own one. 

It took 37 years, but I bought a '22 C81LT without the Z51 package to keep the costs low (growing up as I did, I'm frugal), but added the performance exhaust. 

I went on eBay well before my car was to be made and searched for an Arctic White Z51 spoiler WITH carbon black stripes, and a guy in North Carolina shipped one for $316!

So the only Z51 package things I wanted - performance exhaust and spoiler - I got for < ¼ the price! 

When my spoiler cam, I was showing it to my 3 sons and my youngest, who was 7 and built a LOT of LEGO sets, looked at it and asked "So...so...so...WHEN do they send the REST of the parts?!"

I wanted the MRR FS06 wheels, but they were about $600 a wheel!  Still frugal, I told myself if I sold enough stuff IN A MONTH to buy them I would, and within a month I'd sold a few things and had enough! 

The dealer swapped out everything at no charge.

I added the Wickers and front-end splitter from ACS Composites. Their parts seem VERY well made.

I'm 3½ years into ownership and just past 10K miles. 

Absolutely love it and have had 57 different butts in the passenger seat so far! Yes, there's a list.

While it made for a different childhood than I'd have otherwise had, I'm thankful for the walks my Dad and I took way back when.  I was able to take him for a drive ONE time before he passed away - he LOVED it.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!"

What gives that story real weight is not just that Roy finally bought the car. It is the math behind it. In 1985, 24,000 dollars was nearly an entire year of his father's income. A single red C4 on a quiet street may as well have been a parked starfighter to a kid living in an apartment with a parent who was saving every spare dollar for a house. His dad chose a roof over a sports car, stability over fiberglass fantasy. The irony is that the same frugality that kept a Corvette out of the family driveway in 1985 is what eventually put a far more advanced Corvette into Roy's in 2022. The lesson was simple and permanent: it is possible to chase a dream without abandoning common sense.

2025 Chevrolet Corvette: Trim Options 

• The C8 marks a radical shift: for the first time ever in Corvette history, the engine is placed behind the cabin, giving the car a much lower center of gravity and rear-biased weight layout for serious performance advantage. 
• The weight distribution shifts to roughly 40% front / 60% rear, which means significantly more mass, and thus traction, over the driven rear wheels. That equates to about 2,210 lbs on the rear tires when stationary. 
• As for curb weight, the base C8 Stingray weighs about 3,647 lb (≈ 1,654 kg). 
• Despite being heavier than older front-engine versions, the mid-engine layout and optimized balance deliver impressive handling and agility. 
• Trim-wise, Corvette C8 is offered in multiple versions, from the base Stingray to performance-focused variants such as Z06, ZR1, and even hybrid-assisted in some versions, giving buyers a spectrum from a daily-usable supercar to a near-track-ready beast.

You can see that lesson in how he spec'd and built his C8. Instead of ticking every performance box, he started with a 1LT Stingray and skipped the Z51 package to keep the price in check. Then he reverse-engineered the option sheet. He found an Arctic White Z51 spoiler with carbon black stripes on eBay for 316 dollars, picked the factory performance exhaust, and ended up with the two Z51 components he actually cared about for less than a quarter of the package price. The MRR FS06 wheels were the same story. At roughly 600 dollars per corner, he refused to simply swipe a card. 

He gave himself a month to sell enough of his own stuff to pay for them. He met the goal, the dealer swapped everything over at no charge, and the car became his version of a dream fulfilled through discipline rather than impulse. Add Wickers and a front splitter from ACS Composites, and you have a thoughtfully built Corvette, not just an expensive one.

The real charm in Roy's post is that the car is never just a collection of parts. It is a thread running through his family. When the spoiler arrived and his seven-year-old son, a prolific LEGO builder, stared at the single large piece and asked when the rest of the parts would arrive, it was a small but perfect snapshot of how car enthusiasm is handed down. That moment is not about aerodynamics. It is about a kid trying to reconcile his world of instruction manuals and bricks with the odd reality that sometimes a box contains just one dramatic, road-going toy. Elsewhere in the comments, Brian Duncan described resurrecting his own Arctic White 1999 C5 after a decade of family-focused dormancy, rebuilding it so he could drive his 10-year-old around and hear "go get 'em, dad" every time a Mustang appeared. Different car, same idea. The real payoff is the passenger seat.

Corvettes seem to attract these cross-generational stories. The nameplate has been around long enough to anchor multiple eras of American life, from chrome bumpers to mid-engine aluminum. In the comments under Roy's post, Mark Steele noted that an uncle's Corvette set him on his own path to ownership back in the eighth grade and that he has now owned six of them and still has three. That is not conspicuous consumption. It is evidence that for some people, the Corvette is less a purchase and more a through line. Richard Ciarletta zeroed in on the heart of Roy's story with a simple message of sympathy and encouragement, acknowledging how special it was that Roy managed to get his dad into the C8 for one unforgettable ride.

Roy keeps a literal list of everyone who has shared a seat in his car. Fifty-seven passengers in three and a half years and about 10,000 miles works out to a fresh perspective in the passenger seat roughly every few weeks. That is not the behavior of a collector hiding a car in a climate-controlled garage. It is the behavior of someone who understands that certain machines are worth more as shared experiences than as preserved assets. Every new name on the list is another tiny Thanksgiving, a reminder that joy is more potent when it is divided among people instead of multiplied on a dyno chart.

The most affecting part of the story arrives near the end of his post. Nearly four decades after that summer walk, that red C4 in a stranger's driveway, and his father's shout about annual income, Roy finally put his dad in the passenger seat of his own Corvette. One drive. That was all they got before his father passed away. It was enough. In that moment, the C8 was no longer just a mid-engine sports car with clever packaging and sharp edges. It was the closing of a loop that began with an eight-year-old and a father who chose responsibility over indulgence. A Facebook commenter can only write "sorry for your loss, enjoy that C8 and your family," but behind that sentence is the recognition that some drives stay with you long after the engine is shut off.

Thanksgiving encourages that kind of inventory taking. It invites you to look back at the long route from a modest apartment and neighborhood walks to an Arctic White Stingray in the driveway and 57 names in a notebook. Roy's story is not an advertisement for a brand or a lecture on options. It is a reminder that the important parts of car ownership are often invisible on a window sticker: a parent who made the hard choices, children who laugh at spoilers that look like half finished toys, friends and relatives who climb into the passenger seat and climb out a little lighter, and one quiet, final ride with the man who unknowingly started it all. The C8 is the metal that carried those moments, but the real subject here is gratitude, and on this holiday, it is hard to think of anything more appropriate to be thankful for.

Image Sources: Chevrolet Media Center

Noah Washington is an automotive journalist based in Atlanta, Georgia. He enjoys covering the latest news in the automotive industry and conducting reviews on the latest cars. He has been in the automotive industry since 15 years old and has been featured in prominent automotive news sites. You can reach him on X and LinkedIn for tips and to follow his automotive coverage.