OPTIMA Presents Corvette of the Week: Valet Bait

This is a special Corvette of the Week. This beautiful piece of valet bait made national news, and has parking personnel across America running scared.  In the event you’ve been spending time off planet Earth’s inviting crust, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version of what happened.

Sunday night, Dan Cowles and his wife, Sandy were attending a show at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, CA. Upon arriving, Dan valeted his 2015 Corvette Stingray, but before exiting the vehicle, he activated Valet Mode on the Corvette’s Performance Data Recorder.

What happened next made Dan feel somewhat violated.

After the show, Dan discovered the PDR had recorded the valet accelerating the C7 up to 50 mph in the parking structure. Dan posted the video evidence here on Corvette Forum. On Monday morning, managing editor, John Coyle posted an article about it to our front page, and that’s when Dan’s 15 minutes of fame began.

By Monday night, the valet story made the 11 o’clock news on KNBC-TV in Los Angeles. By Wednesday morning “Valetgate” went national on ABC’s Good Morning America. That evening KTLA-TV was ready to broadcast live from Dan’s driveway (click here to check out their report where they mention us). While that was happening, the Corvette Forum news crew (me, my Canon EOS Rebel T3i and iPhone 5s) was also on the scene to interview Dan.

Here’s Dan’s reflection on all the media attention.

… and I am certain valets are on the lookout for PDR-equipped Corvettes.

Dan is a great man. It’s too bad this somewhat negative event happened to such a stand-up guy. Dan Cowles is a true Corvette Forum fanatic, and his car is quite the looker. It is easily Corvette of the Week. In August I named one Corvette of the Week “Corvette of the Year” based off its configuration’s relationship to sales trends, but Dan’s C7 has just stolen that car’s title all school-bully style. Over the past year I’ve named favorites in this category, but Dan’s car is by far my new favorite Corvette of the Week for 2014.

Let’s face it, you can’t beat national attention … and Torch Red.

Because this is the final “CotW” feature for the year before next week’s “Top 10 Corvettes of the Week”, nobody will ever beat Dan, EVER!

Chime in with your thoughts on the forum. >>

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