Fan Friday: Eric Stalfort's 2005 Daytona Sunset Orange C6 Corvette Coupe

He was five years old, standing at the side of the road in 1975, when a black Stingray on chrome five-spokes went past and rearranged his whole idea of what a car could be. Fifty-one years later — after three very active daughters and a run of out-of-state tuition bills — Eric Stalfort finally has one in his own driveway. It has been about a month. He says he doesn't expect to stop smiling.

The car he waited for is a 2005 coupe in Daytona Sunset Orange, a color that reads copper in the shade and hot metal in direct sun. That combination puts him in thinner company than the mileage of the color suggests: of the 37,372 Corvettes built for 2005, 2,379 were Daytona Sunset Orange coupes. Under the hood, the 6.0L LS2 left Bowling Green with 400 horsepower and 400 lb-ft; Eric's has since picked up a supercharger and an aftermarket exhaust, so the number is no longer the factory number. The rest of the car reads as a driver that gets fussed over — chrome multi-spoke wheels, red calipers behind them, a darkened roof panel over a body-color halo bar, and carbon-look rockers running the length of the sills.

There is a nice piece of timing buried in his story. Orange disappeared from the Corvette order sheet after 1977 and did not come back for 28 years — no orange at all through the C4 and C5 eras. It returned with the C6's debut in 2005 as Daytona Sunset Orange Metallic, code 71U, and lasted exactly two model years before Atomic Orange replaced it for 2007. So the boy who fell for a Corvette in the middle of the last orange era waited out the entire drought and bought a car from the first year it ended. 2005 was a year of firsts generally: it opened the C6 generation, brought the LS2, and put exposed headlamps on a Corvette for the first time since 1962.

Thanks for sending this one in, Eric — fifty-one years is a long time to hold onto a five-year-old's opinion, and you picked a good one to end the wait with. 🏎️

What we'd put on Eric's car next

2005-2013 C6 Corvette Touch-Up Paint - Premium Kit — Daytona Sunset Orange is one of 23 color options in the dropdown, which matters on a two-year-only code where "close enough" never is; Eric already keeps this one on the shelf. → Shop the C6 Touch-Up Paint Premium Kit

C6 2005-2013 Corvette Base Fender Cove LED Lighting Kit (Single Color) — The kit comes in orange among its eight colors, which on this car means the fender coves glow the same shade as the paint once the sun drops. → Shop the C6 Base Fender Cove LED Kit

C6 Corvette Personalized Unisex Cotton Pocket Tee — Also offered in orange, and personalized, which feels right for a car somebody spent five decades getting around to. → Shop the C6 Personalized Pocket Tee

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