Is a C5 With a Supercharger The Best Budget Corvette?

Adding a supercharger to a C5 gets you a reliable 550 horsepower that will embarrass many modern sports cars… For less than $35K all-in.

This might be painful for some of you to hear, but the C5 Corvette is now an antique. That’s right. In many states a car is considered an antique once it is 25 years old. The C5 generation started in 1997 so those early cars are now 26 years old. Time flies. With 345 to 350 horsepower, a zero to 60 time of about 5 seconds and a top speed over 170 mph the C5 has plenty of performance to be entertaining in 2023. However, a new Ford Mustang GT, Camaro SS, and even a Toyota Supra will put a stock C5 in their rearview mirrors in the quarter mile. If you just can’t live with that, there is a simple solution. A supercharger.

A video was posted recently on the Toys4Life C5 YouTube channel. In this video we see the benefits of putting a supercharger on a C5 Corvette. The C5 in the video put down a whopping 585 horsepower in the dyno after a supercharger install. That is a hell of a jump up from stock. And with that kind of power the antique C5 will show its taillights to a lot of modern sports cars. So, should you add a supercharger to a C5? Like a lot of things in life, there are pros and cons, but the pro list is pretty heavily stacked. Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Budget Brawler

You can grab a nice C5 example today for about $25,000. Figure $8K to $10K for a supercharger setup. You can certainly get it done for less, but let’s budget on the high side for the sake of argument. You now have a C5 Corvette making over 550 horsepower for less than $35K. That means each pony costs you only about 63 bucks. That is one heck of a bargain. And from the outside only the supercharger whine will tip off folks that this is not a stock C5. So, prepare to see a lot of surprised faces as you blast by them.

Performance

Even if you are a bit skeptical of the dyno numbers, you can’t argue with the performance numbers. The C5 in the video ran 13.3 at 107 mph in the quarter mile when stock. After installing the supercharger, the car runs 11.5 at 130 mph in the quarter mile. That is just a couple ticks slower but with a higher trap speed than a brand new C8 Stingray. And you will demolish the Ford Mustang GT and Toyota Supra that we mentioned earlier. And for far less money. Plus, you will be driving a Corvette, not a Ford or Toyota.

Downsides

There aren’t too many drawbacks here but nothing in life is without consequence so there are a couple things to consider. Adding a supercharger is a great way to improve performance but dropping eight grand is not in the budget for everyone. For the performance it is a bargain, but eight grand is still eight grand and that is a sizable chunk of money. The LS1 is robust and should be able to handle the power just fine. But there is no doubt you are adding some stress to the engine, so longevity may be a slight concern. Also fuel mileage won’t suffer much during regular cruising. But let’s be honest. With that kind of power under your foot, you will be tempted to stand on the loud pedal a bit more often so in reality mileage will suffer some.

Obviously deciding if this path is right for you is your call and depends on your specific situation. But in general terms a supercharged C5 Corvette is one hell of a performance bargain. With most things in life increasing age tends to decrease performance. It is just a fact of life. But that doesn’t mean we have to live with it. Think of a supercharger as a little blue pill (that coincidently was released around the same time as the C5) for your Corvette. It gives this antique the performance to keep up with much younger models.

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