Just writing the headline caused me more pain than you folks could ever imagine. For almost three straight years, I’ve been touting the brilliance of the C6 Corvette and confronting the truth of how General Motors truly is, and always will be, the best engineers to ever do it (when they want to, that is).

Where else can you find such a stylish car making all that power and torque? That has held all the camera gear AND luggage for myself and a friend so comfortably that I could still take the targa top off and place it over the top of that luggage? That’s a fraction of the price of every other vehicle in its competitive set and still beats them on the track? And what other car is doing all that while still getting upwards of 30 miles per gallon on the highway? You find me something comparable, and I’m all ears.

For all the love I have for my brilliant, beautiful, Machine Silver vehicle, it’s about time I finally acknowledge something that’s been torturing me for quite some time now. And it rhymes with shmiberglass shmbody, shmspecifically the shmdoor.

What’s the sitch?

From a solo run up to Angeles Crest. Photo: Griffin Riley

First and foremost, let me be journalistically correct and say that the Corvette is no longer built out of fiberglass, but is instead made of sheet molding compound (or composite, depending on who you ask), but it’s basically gentrified fiberglass, so I’m opting to heretofore refer to it as such. Secondly: I wanna say I’m not generically anti-fiberglass. In fact, the only negative thought I can really actively throw at it is that I did a solid six to 35% of the work on our Autozam AZ-1 Liberty Walk body kit with one of the Galpin Auto Sports techs, Rob, and it kinda sucked sometimes.

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That kit was basically entirely fiberglass (except for a spoiler which was authentic carbon fiber for #RealDownforce), and I regularly found myself coming home with fiberglass splinters in my skin every day, and I just didn’t enjoy that. That being said, fiberglass makes sense for low-volume things like kit cars or, in the case of my almighty chariot, the Chevy Corvette. Yes, the Corvette is absurdly high volume compared to most sports cars, but still hyper rare compared to like…everything else with a bowtie on it.

All things considered, it’s a pretty cool material that’s super easy to work with, super lightweight while still offering impressive rigidity, and it’s cheap. Sure, carbon fiber monocoques exist all over racing and high-end road cars alike now, but that ish is expensive, man. I’ll take the poor man’s fiber every day if I were a poverty-stricken individual looking for light but tensile goodies.

But I didn’t start this article with the intention of giving a half-butted history on a magical lightweight composite material. No, I came to tell you that Corvette’s doors love to fuckin’ break themselves, and it’s caused me so much annoyance and pain, and I just wanna cry because this car is otherwise so dang good and now I have to partially cede the floor. It stresses me out, man.

The Realization

A dark day in my Corvette stewardship. Photo: Griffin Riley

It all started at my previous apartment that was right across the street from a very busy middle school on a classically narrow LA neighborhood street. One day, I came out to my car and found a note saying “sorry, I scratched your car! Call me and we can figure it out,” and I found a blemish on my front left fender.

Now I won’t lie, I’ve loved the idea of absolutely ratting out and suping up the C6 in the event of a heavy hypothetical collision, but that ain’t this. I’ve got pride in my stuff, so having a minor blemish on an otherwise pristine machine is unacceptable, so I hit her up; we exchanged insurance info, I got it repaired, and I thought that was forever to be the end of it. I was so wrong.

A few months back, I met up with my dad in Arizona, and when we said goodbye, he noticed my door misbehaving when I sat back down to head out. I was pulling it with some force, and I’m at least like three strong out of 10, so closing a little fiberglass door should be easy, and yet here we are.

Look at that stud and his old door.

He asked me a bunch about it, and I told him it was something I feel like I’d been dealing with for quite some time, but I couldn’t say for sure. (Realistically, it was probably a “boiling frog” situation where it slowly got bad, and I just never really noticed it thanks to how gradual it was). Dad’s conclusion: the shop that repaired my car after the collision didn’t put a shim where they should’ve, and now the door is essentially at an angle and rubbing against the body. Point is, it’s time to take it back to the shop and have ‘em correct the error. The only problem is: there was no error.

When the techs at my body shop investigated it, they informed me of something that’s been known in the community for years but was unfortunate news to me. In short, the spring in the door’s hinge is way stronger than what the fiberglass can easily handle, which creates hairline fractures or straight-up holes around where the hinge is bonded to the door for many owners.

My old door’s hinge.

The more research pops up, and I did, the more we realized this is a genuine problem. Remember when I said I’m at least three strong out of ten? Well, it’s not that I’m too weak to open my door; it’s that this failure quickly leads to excessively difficult door closures and, even worse, can lead to equally difficult egress from the vehicle.

Listen, Corvettes and doors are always a topic of discussion throughout their history, and I’ve experienced it firsthand with passengers. They see the handle with an unconventional button to exit, and they get confused since it’s not a clear latched handle, and that confusion has actually taken owners’ lives in the past when a dead or failed battery rendered the door popper non-operational, which is nothing short of a tragedy. There is a mechanical lever by your feet you can pull to release the door latch and exit in that scenario, but I’d venture to say many owners don’t know about it, and certainly very few passengers know about it either.

This is all to say that it’s a car that I personally don’t have any safety concerns with, but it’s impossible to ignore that it has a history with doors, and now I have to reconcile with the fact that the door’s very construction could fail and keep me from having as clean of an egress as I would otherwise like in a pinch.

There were many times in the pre-repair days that I tried to exit the car, and it straight up wouldn’t budge, and I was forced to use the hard mechanical latch, then push it open, and while it doesn’t take long to do that, it’s still frightening to think about what would happen if I was in a jackpot of a situation and had to fumble around my floor to get my latch to leave the car.

You’re a lovely car, no doubt, but I will NOT be dying in you. Photo: Griffin Riley

The Solutions

While doing research to see how far and wide this problem was, there was one conclusion that felt abundantly clear to me: there isn’t one. If you wanna make sure you have a usable door on your C6, you simply have to source a new one and throw it on your ride. That’s it. But there are some things you can do to hopefully avoid a failure in the future!

The first one is just to be careful. If you open the door too far, it’s gonna force that spring into the door harder than it ever should, and then you’re back at square one with your problems. The other big recommendation I’m seeing is to lubricate the door hinge specifically around its detent, presumably to smooth out the opening and closing stages. Otherwise, it’s just checking things all day. Here’s what Go-Parts.com says:

• Focus on the Lower Hinge: The lower hinge fails most often. This is the part you need to inspect most carefully. It contains the spring and roller mechanism.

• Check for Play: The most important test. Hold the two halves of the hinge and try to wiggle them. There should be almost zero play at the pivot pin. If you can feel it moving or see the pin hole is oval-shaped, the hinge is worn out and will cause door sag.

• Inspect the Roller (Lower Hinge Only): The small wheel on the detent arm should spin freely and smoothly. A seized, rusty, or flat-spotted roller is the primary cause of popping noises and binding. If it doesn’t spin, the hinge is no good.

• Look for Cracks: Inspect the cast metal body of the hinge, especially around the mounting holes and the pivot pin area. Stress cracks can develop, making the hinge unsafe.

• Verify the Spring (Lower Hinge Only): Ensure the detent spring is present and feels strong. You should have to apply significant pressure to move the roller arm.

• Match the Part Number: While they look similar, the upper, lower, left, and right hinges are all different. The prompt for this article covers the Front Passenger (Right) side. You will need one upper hinge (GM Part #15925761) and one lower hinge (GM Part #20982042).

Another indication of a hyperactive hinge. Via Facebook.

Honestly, it’s a shame to have such an otherwise incredible machine be susceptible to such a mundane but catastrophic failure. It’s not like it’s inhibiting the use of the car, but it is a serious safety impediment if left unchecked or untreated, and it’s not the cheapest or easiest fix either. And if you’re as unlucky as I am, you’re gonna have a couple of minor issues with the new door too, where the doorcard doesn’t feel like it sits quite right anymore, leaving me with insane amounts of play when I try to open the door.

Is the C6 Corvette still the undisputed king of smiles per mile and power per dollar that you can find? Yeah, I’d say so. There’s just nothing that operates in the same price range and segment as the Corvette while still being incredibly practical for daily use. But, unfortunately, it’s an imperfect machine, all because of a pesky little door. Oh, and it sounds like it happens on C1s and C2s as well. You might think GM would therefore have made certain to thoroughly reinforce the door-mounting areas all the way up to C6, but apparently not. “Awesome.”

Guess I just have to swap it all to carbon fiber, right?

Top graphic images: Griffin Riley