Yellow Jacket

Putting Lingenfelter Sting Into This C5

- Steve Temple

Is it better to buy factory performance or add it yourself?

Well, if you ask Don and Tanya Pauley, it’s cheaper to do the latter. They took a standard C5 and gave it way more performance and personality than a factory Z06, and all for the same amount of money.

Before getting into the build details, though, a bit of background. They’ve owned a few Corvettes over the years, starting with a 1973 silver T-top back in 1977 purchased right after they were married. They owned that car for 10 years, but when kids came along they agreed to sell it since family came first. The buyer was an F-15 fighter pilot who flew from Boise, Idaho, to Indianapolis to check out the car, and promptly drove it back home.

Next came the Corvette you see here, a 2000 C5 purchased direct from the factory in Bowling Green. Initially, Tanya wanted a black one and Don a yellow one. They ended up getting a white one, though, with a view to giving it a custom black-and-yellow paint job as a happy compromise.

Before that happened, however, the couple went on a road trip out West, and while driving through Utah, came upon an exit sign for the Bonneville Salt Flats. The Arctic White Corvette blended into the vast expanse of desert scape of the Flats, where Don was able to run the car up to 140 mph. This number would prove to be an important benchmark for him for evaluating an upgrade to the car’s performance, as we’ll see.