This week, America celebrated National Corvette Day on June 30, followed immediately by Drive Your Corvette to Work Day on July 1. With all this focus on America’s sports car, we decided it was high time to rank every Corvette generation from best to worst, starting with the 1953 C1 and running all the way to today’s mid-engine C8 . Everybody has a different opinion on the Corvette, and just about everyone ranks the generations differently. So, we asked everyone on the Jalopnik staff to submit their own ranking, from best to worst, of all 8 generations. Let’s meet the staff and find out just how right — or wrong — they can be when it comes to the Corvettes of past and present.

The C7 is the one that always comes to mind whenever I think of the word “Corvette.” It’s the ultimate distillation of the classic Corvette recipe: A big V8 up front, a stick shift in the middle, and all that power and torque going to the rear. The C7 represented every last little bit of performance GM could wring from the front-engine/rear-drive format before switching to the long-awaited mid-engine C8. It’s also, in my opinion, the best looking modern Corvette, mixing classic Coke-bottle proportions with cutting-edge design features. The C8 is quicker, more powerful, and more impressive in nearly every way, but the C7 is the ultimate Corvette for me.

Listen. I’m not saying the C4 is bad. It’s a Corvette, and the mere existence of a world-beating American sports car is a thing to treasure. I’d happily drive a C4 right now if one showed up outside. Maybe I’m just jaded by the fact that every girl in my 1st grade class had a Barbie Corvette in their toy bin, and they were all C4s. Maybe I’ve been influenced by Stone Cold Steve Austin filling Vince McMahon’s C4 with cement . (I’m told the calcified Corvette still lives in a parking garage at WWE headquarters.) Don’t think of this as me saying I hate the C4. It’s just the one I love the least.

This might be controversial, but to me the C6 is it. Like I was telling my coworkers, the C6 really introduced the Corvette to the world and demonstrated it could compete with the Europeans. Even Jeremy Clarkson liked it . Sort of. A C6 Zo6 had 500 horsepower, which was madness in the mid ‘00s. Fast-forward to the end of the decade and GM gave us sort of America’s supercar at the time in the ZR1. Carbon fiber body panels, carbon-ceramic brakes and best of all , 620 hp supercharged LS9 V8 in a car that weighed just 3,300 pounds. Just for the interior improvement over the C5, which looks as if it was permanently stained with interior wax, the C6 gets the top spot for me.

I honestly believe without the performance enhancements the C6 brought we wouldn’t have the C8. It was that good.

Like many cars, the malaise era wasnt kind to the Corvette. Sure it looks the part and has all the right lines. But that meant nothing with engines that were detuned because of emissions regs. I love the planet to, but theres no way in hell I’d drive around in a Corvette with a 350 cubic inch V8 making only 180 hp. I think the most power you could get out of any Vette model at this time was 210. Horrible.

When you’re my age (a middle-aged 25) and think of Corvettes, only one generation comes to mind: the one we grew up with… the C6. Yes, yes I know it isn’t everyone’s first choice, but I’m here to tell you they are wrong. Don’t agree with me? I don’t have time for that negativity. The C6 is the first Corvette to really mean something on a world stage. Sure the C5 laid that groundwork, but its interior was made out of Legos and chewing gum.

The C7 continued on the formula of the C6, but it got a little bit too Transformer-y for my taste. The C8 is cool, but I dunno man. I like a front engine and a manual transmission.

The C6 just hits everything perfectly – especially the Z06 with its mammoth 505 hp 7-liter LS7 V8. That was the stuff of dreams for a young car enthusiast in the mid-2000s. Oh no… I’m on Autotrader again.

Flip over for a bonus Number 9...

Let me explain this. I’ve made a new Corvette generation. It’s all C3s made after 1973, when emissions regulations took hold and killed all fun. Damn government. What hateful vehicles that do not deserve to be in the same conversation as early C3s.

Look how they massacred my boy.

Look, Andy is clearly my mirror universe evil doppelgänger. His worldview is a twisted shadow of mine, made septic and putrid by horrors birthed from dark corners of his mind that I fear to even imagine. But when he’s right, he’s right, and this is one of those occasions: The C6 is simply the best Corvette.

I’ll admit to the nostalgia argument — I too grew up with the C6, and its yellow race livery with COMPUWARE written down the side is still my default mental image of a Corvette. But the C6 is more than a nostalgia play, it’s the first truly modern Corvette, replacing the C5's pillowy interior and truly ‘90s looks with something that fit the Information Age. It’s a good car.

Modern motorsports, too, have made good use of the C6. Look no further than Matt Field’s Formula DRIFT-spec Corvette to see a modern interpretation of the chassis. If you’ve got a couple hours to kill, why not watch the entire build series too ?

Andy says that the C3 is really two different cars, but that would requite an ND Miata-style hard shift. Instead, the C3 slowly faded into impotent irrelevance, tainting every ‘Vette to wear its sleek sheet metal. The C3 took all the beautiful promise of the Mako Shark and dulled it, sanded down the edges, and forced it into eternal mediocrity. For shame.

I hate the Corvette. Just letting you know off the bat. You see, I grew up in the nineties around the time of the C4 and C5. My early memories or impressions of the Corvette were pleasant, but I’ve always been a Viper fan at heart.

The Corvettes of my youth didn’t move me like the Viper did, and by the time the Viper SRII came around with its racing stripes, I was fully Team Dodge. Compared to the Viper, the Corvette struck me as a bland, overpriced wedge.

It wasn’t until I was way older that I came to appreciate the Corvette, after realizing just how simple and uncomplicated and taut the C4 really is. All of its angles are devoid of unnecessary lines. You could draw the C4 in four lines or less! And yet it’s such an expressive and honest car, with a strong sense of self. The early C4 also happens to have one of the greatest rear profiles of all time.

The angriest Corvette so far: the mid-engine C8. The Corvette that ate a lemon. The C8 makes no pretense to style. It’s an American sports car that performs better than exotics or supercars when judged by price to performance. It just looks so overwrought.

The glorious circular tail lights have been crushed and fragmented, while its side panels are a mess of creases and folds. Its design zigs and zags as tightly as this latest generation can corner, but its performance can’t overcome those sharp angles and hard breaks. Again, it’s nearly the zenith of American performance cars. But someone has to tell the C8 that a car doesn’t have to be angry in order to be fast .

My friend and colleague José and I agree on many things — that meaningful technological progress died when the 3.5-millimeter audio jack did, and that the 3 Series Compact was the coolest E36 . We also agree that Corvettes are almost always lame.

My reasoning? For nearly my entire life, the Corvette has never aspired to be anything more than the most inoffensive, mediocre sports car money could buy. That is, until the C8 where — I’ll give it to General Motors — it finally succeeded in rewriting the script, the way the father of the Corvette wanted to six decades prior . Out of that we gained an affordable mid-engine supercar, and those don’t come around very often.

Here’s the problem with the C8 though: It’s unabashedly, irredeemably ugly. Non copyright-infringing Ferrari-made-for-Grand Theft Auto ugly. No matter how wonderfully the C8 drives, nor how it embarrasses vehicles several orders of magnitude more expensive, it’d never get the nod from me. If I could name any Corvette as my favorite, official generations be damned, I’d give it to the Italdesign Moray concept from 2003. A modern Vette with a soul — how unforgivable.

That leaves me with my second choice, the only time Chevrolet’s flagship has ever deserved its reputation: the C2. I don’t need to extol the brilliance of Larry Shinoda’s design, a development of Pete Brock’s earlier Stingray racer. The haunches; the low, flat hood; the stout-yet-emotive canopy and four of the best taillights ever to grace the automotive medium say it all for me. Rarely has a concept ever been evolved for production so masterfully.

I remember when I saw the C7 for the very first time. I was standing in line for stir fry in one of Rutgers’ dining halls (I swear, I’ve been searching for stir fry that good since the day I graduated), thumbing through Twitter when I saw the Jalopnik post . On one hand, I was disappointed but not at all surprised that the mid-engine rumors once again amounted to vapor. On the other, I couldn’t believe GM hired the designer of the Nissan GT-R to trace over a Ferrari 599 and got away with it. With time the C7 got only worse, as illustrated by the ZR1's extracted wisdom-tooth jowls.

I have to admit, most of my youth was spent in and around the garages of Werner Meier , one of the most notable of Corvette collectors and enthusiasts in the country. Those garages which were filled with not only his Corvettes, but those of his customers for restoration over the years. I was incredibly spoiled in seeing every Corvette it seems. With that amount of exposure to all of those Corvettes, you quickly find your favorites and least.

Bringing me to the C2, the crown jewel. While I liked the C1, the bubbly lines, which were a product of its debut in the ‘50s, that just didn’t vibe. No, I liked when those lines evolved to become more sleek and edgy, bringing about the C2.

If you’re not familiar with the story of Corvette, the C2 would be the moniker’s saving grace. While Corvette was doing “alright” in the ‘50s, and was finally competing in racing starting in 1957, GM wasn’t having it, and the program was nearly killed off. Bill Mitchell, the chief designer of the Corvette at the time, would end up funding the development of the C2 out of his own pocket. When I had a chance to listen to designer Peter Brock talk about Bill’s work on the C2, he mentioned GM’s conditions to keep the car: It was not allowed to carry the “Chevrolet” or “Corvette” name. So, the “Sting Ray” was born. Bill’s direct contributions would keep the Corvette going from there.

Which brings me to the last on the list....

Have you ever seen a C5 next to like a C4, or C3, or a C7 for that matter? It’s the widest thing I’ve ever seen, like a Corvette with a horrid bee sting allergic reaction that just puffed up into whatever shape you want to call the C5. Vehicles were getting larger in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, and the C5 was unfortunately, a victim of that trend. Designers learned their lesson by adding some lines again to the C6, recovering a bit more with the C7 and C8.