It's not just Chevy's sports car, it has been the only American production sports car for most of its nearly fifty-year existence. And, if hasn't always been the most high-tech sports car available, it has rarely been criticized for a lack of performance. The C5 is offered in Coupe, Convertible, and Hardtop body styles.
All transmissions are rear-mounted transaxles for better weight distribution and handling.
I tried a Corvette Hardtop a year or so ago and found it to be an impressive vehicle. More recently, I was able to spend a week with a Coupe equipped with almost all of the available luxuries. Despite an appointment level almost appropriate to a luxury car, the Coupe was no softie. It was more like a barbarian in a tuxedo - elegant at a glance, with plenty of rippling muscle underneath. The C5 Coupe is discernibly a Corvette, with proportions familiar from the past quarter of a century of Corvettes.