Jim Fusco’s love for fast and beautiful cars traces all the way back to his childhood and the countless hours he spent with Aurora AFX slot cars. Playing with these small scale models led to his obsession with the first mode of transport available to him, bicycles. Just a few short years later Fusco got his license, and the bikes gave way to a vehicle of the four-wheeled variety.
“My first car was a two-door 1972 Pontiac Ventura, which was a re-badged Chevy Nova that my father had bought from our neighbor. The car had a 307 V-8 and a two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission, [and] I had to share it with my older brother for the first couple of years until he got a job that offered him a company car.”
Fusco swapped out the 307 for a 327 that he and his then-girlfriend (who would later become his wife) rebuilt together after pulling the seized small-block from a ’69 Caprice he bought for $100. After the break-in period, the couple took the car to Old Bridge Raceway Park in New Jersey and won a bracket-racing class trophy, not because Pontiac was fast, but because it consistently ran 15.50-second ETs in the quarter-mile.
“My wife still reminds me to this day that she was 0.1 second faster than me,” Fusco admits.
After the Ventura, Fusco owned several Camaros, starting with a second-generation model.
“I used my $500 tax refund to buy a ’71 that was a bit of a mess, but over time I restored it and made it into a split-bumper Z/28. After that I had two IROC Camaros and some other cool cars, but I was always thinking about getting a Corvette.”
As so often happens, other priorities—in this case, raising children—forced Fusco to put his Corvette-buying plans on hold for a time. But when those obligations had been fully satisfied, he was quick to take the next step.
“I was able to put some money aside…and in 2004, once the children finished high school, I started fishing around on the internet for a C5,” he says. “I discovered that Kerbeck Chevrolet had a 2000 that checked all the boxes in terms of exterior color, interior color, and [having] a six-speed manual transmission. I went to Atlantic City…to look at the car with my wife, and she wasn’t very happy about it because she wanted to remodel our kitchen. The Corvette was in immaculate condition, with only 4,000 miles on the odometer, so I bought it.”
In keeping with his initial plan, Fusco used the car in the same ways he used the IROCs previously owned. Besides driving it regularly on nice days, even through the winter, he tested its limits on road-racing courses several times each year.
“I’m a member of the Cumberland Valley [Pennsylvania] Corvette Club, and I do the track days with them. I had previously done track days with the BMW Club with my ’88 IROC-Z with a five-speed, which is how I got my start tracking my cars. I had the good fortune to experience Lime Rock Park, which is a great circuit, and Bridgehampton before it closed for good.
“Most of the track days with Cumberland Corvette are at Summit Point Raceway and Pocono Raceway. At Pocono we rent the track each spring and get the infield and one of the ovals. That’s a lot of fun!”
Though the IROCs Fusco enjoyed before acquiring his C5 were specifically engineered for sharp performance on track, the Corvette was definitely a step up.
“There’s a big difference in the handling,” he tells us. “The Camaros were somewhat tail loose, and it was easy to hang the rear end out, but the Corvette is more balanced. Its 50/50 weight distribution makes a big difference.”
The C5 was completely stock when Fusco bought it, and he was determined to keep it that way—with a few significant exceptions. Within the first year he replaced the stock front springs, shocks, and sway bar with stiffer, stronger Z06 parts. He also installed Z06 brake calipers, which dress things up a bit thanks to their powder-coated red finish.
In 2012, after nearly nine years of continuous use, the C5’s odometer reached a milestone 250,000 miles. It had been incredibly reliable and still retained nearly all of its original components at that point, including the factory-installed starter motor, alternator, water pump, radiator, wheel bearings, and air-conditioning compressor. The Z06 suspension installed in 2005 remained tight and effective. The original engine, transmission, and differential had never been opened up.
Not wanting to tempt fate, Fusco decided to retire the car from track use at this juncture. He and his wife—who did get her remodeled kitchen, by the way—continued to enjoy street driving the car in the years that followed. Besides cruising around town, they’ve done a lot of long-distance touring, including annual trips to Detroit for the Woodward Dream Cruise and Bowling Green, Kentucky, for visits to the National Corvette Museum.
When photographed for this feature, in July 2025, the C5 showed 430,274 miles on its odometer. Since then the Fuscos have added another 11,000 to the clock, bringing the grand total to a little over 441,000. While the engine has still never been apart, a few items—the water pump, alternator, and starter motor—did finally fail at around the 300K mark and require replacement. With much-appreciated assistance from friends Nick Chasler and Chris Goss, Fusco also rebuilt the torque tube and replaced the original transmission with a low-mileage six-speed out of another Corvette.
Growing Family
Though he thought it best to spare his high-mileage C5 the stress that track use delivers, Fusco wasn’t ready to give up the fun, so in 2015 he set out to find another Corvette, preferably a red or orange C6 Grand Sport with low miles, that he could push hard on road courses a couple of times per year.
“In 2015, just a few days from my birthday, we found a 2013 Grand Sport…at a Subaru dealership in a suburb of Philadelphia,” Fusco says. “It was originally owned by an older man, and it was his ‘trophy car’ that he never drove hard. It was two years old and had 10,010 miles, so it was driven only 5,000 miles each year. And it’s red, which is perfect because my wife really likes C6 styling and red is her favorite color.”
In addition to doing a couple of track days each year with this car, Fusco and his wife have done quite a bit of street driving with it over the last 11 years. “I sometimes drive it to work on sunny days,” he reveals, “and we’ve done a fair number of long trips with it. The mileage is presently at 135,000 and like the C5, it’s been extremely reliable.
“The only issue we’ve had was with the air-conditioning compressor. The rivets holding the compressor clutch together failed, so we had to replace that. It was summertime, and we were about to drive it from Pennsylvania to Texas to visit our daughter and her family, so we needed air conditioning.”
Fusco likely would have remained content with two Corvettes in his garage, but the C6 is an automatic, and over time he longed for the additional challenge that a manual gearbox presents on track. “I got a craving for another stick, and I was getting close to retiring from work, so in 2024 I started looking for a [manual] C7 as a pre-retirement gift to myself.”
While poking around on the internet, Fusco came across a 2017 seven-speed in California that caught his attention, and he quickly made a deal on it. It’s another Grand Sport, this one in Sterling Blue, a rare, one-year-only color both he and his wife really like.
“It had 20,000 miles, which is a little bit more than I wanted, but it was still in like-new condition and otherwise checked all of the boxes,” Fusco says.
As planned, Fusco has since done some track days with the C7, and he and his wife have also driven it around town as well as on some long trips. It currently has about 56,000 miles on the clock. As with its stablemates, the car has been very reliable overall, save for the dreaded wheel-cracking problem so many other C7 Grand Sport and Z06 owners have suffered with.
“I cracked three of the four original wheels,” Fusco reports. “The third one cracked when we were on our way to Texas. [Having anticipated that], we had brought a portable air compressor, and we stopped about every 20 minutes to add air to the tire. Just by dumb luck, a Chevy dealer in Lubbock, Texas, happened to have a new wheel, so we replaced it when we got there. Ultimately, the solution to the problem was replacing the OEM wheels with aftermarket ones that look like the originals.”
Given the obvious pattern, we asked Fusco whether he plans to add a C8 to his growing mini-collection. He thought for a moment before replying.
“Reports of a C8 Grand Sport coming piqued my interest, and I’ll probably look into it, but I don’t think we will buy one. My wife and I don’t like the C8 because there’s no storage space inside. We’re used to having a rear hatch and good space there where we can put stuff on our long trips, and [the ability to] reach back to access it while we’re driving.”
With or without a C8, the Fuscos plan to keep enjoying their Corvettes in a variety of environments in the years ahead. The C5 and C6 have both been on the Tail of the Dragon, the spectacular section of Highway 129 in Tennessee where the Great Smoky Mountains meet the Cherokee National Forest, and they plan to take the C7 there as well. The two newer cars will continue to carve up various racetracks a couple of times a year. And the Fuscos will keep driving all three Corvettes near and far, piling on the miles and smiling every step of the way.
