A brand-new standard-issue Chevrolet Corvette remains an incredible performance-car bargain. For less than two-thirds of the price of a Porsche 911, the latest C6 thunders to 60 mph in 4.0 seconds flat, corners at 0.99 g, and tops out at 190 mph. And for a two-seat rocket, a Vette is also very practical, with 57 percent more luggage capacity than a Honda Accord and tall gearing that, during relaxed highway cruising, squeezes more than 25 miles from each gallon of premium fuel.

Even so, the Corvette’s current base price of $49,515 might be more than some people can or want to spend. If you fall into this group, you’ll be happy to discover the many used Vettes on the market, given that today’s C6 generation was born in the 2005 model year. When you peruse secondhand Corvettes, you’ll also find that many of them have very low mileage, having been driven mostly on summer weekends in cold states. Three- and four-year-old cars with less than 10,000 miles are not unusual.

To reduce the risks of used-car buying, GM offers a certified used-vehicle (CUV) program. Similar to all such programs, GM’s starts with a detailed, 117-item checklist to make sure that everything is operating as it did when new. The car gets a thorough cleaning and detailing, brakes and tires that are more than half-worn are replaced, and the next scheduled maintenance is performed.

Most important for the buyer’s peace of mind is the addition of a 12-month/12,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty that goes on top of the original 36-month/36,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty. The CUV is also covered by what remains of the original five-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty. So if, in August, you buy an ’05 Vette with 25,000 miles on the odo that was first sold in March 2005, you still have 12 months/12,000 miles of bumper-to-bumper coverage and powertrain coverage until March 2010, or to 100,000 miles. On an ’08 model, the roughly two years remaining on the new-car bumper-to-bumper coverage gets upped to three years.

A CUV Corvette is easy to locate on www.gmcertified.com, but the site’s search functions aren’t strong. For one, you can’t filter by transmission type. Some of the descriptions don’t even identify the gearbox type or the car’s color. Most options go unmentioned. In more than 100 listings, we never saw a reference to the desirable Z51 package, and only through the photos and the 7.0-liter engine size could we determine whether a car was a Z06 model. But free online CarFax history reports are available through GM’s site for each car.

The bottom line is that instead of spending well over $50,000 for an optioned new Corvette—or $75,000 for a Z06—GM’s CUV program has cars priced in the low 30s, with a warranty to protect you if anything goes wrong. Suddenly that $30,000 hot hatch doesn’t look so attractive.

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Insurance for Six Months

Buying used can save a fair amount on premiums, at least with Progressive insurance in Michigan. It also helps to be older in our home state. In California, however, you basically pay through the nose no matter what. But the Progressive rates really penalize traffic citations in the Golden State. The figures below were tabulated with one speeding ticket for a 28-year-old man and two for a 57-year-old man. But for the 57-year-old driving a 2005 C6, the six-month rate goes from $2865 with no tickets to $3498 with one, $4506 with two, and $4699 with three. So once you’ve collected two tickets, you might as well keep your foot down.

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