Everyone at Corvette Online has a real love for the automobile in general, whether it happens to be one of America’s sports car or not. Accordingly, we can certainly resonate with any car lover and their desire to drive the cars they love. However when your car of choice is performance orientated, it typically has certain characteristics (mainly sitting low and having low-hanging body work) that can make it less the easy to drive around town, at least without enduring some scrapes and scuffs.

We love driving our newest project C7 Stingray, dubbed C700, no matter where we are going, and as you can see, we had a few bumps despite being as careful as we could be.

Fortunately, we knew we weren’t the only ones with this problem and where there is a will, there is a way. To combat these scuffs, we decided to install a set of ProTEKt skid plates on our C7, and we are beyond satisfied with the results. Not that we’d still want to run up a curb at this point, but the skid plates have made driving a little more carefree.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Mitch Terry at ProTEKt about their skid plates and he was happy to fill us in on a product that we have truly come to appreciate. Terry explained, “I originally made a set of plates for my personal car (scion FR-S) after scraping the bumper every morning on the way to work. Pretty soon, I was back to driving my truck to work most days, just to keep the FRS looking good for the weekend.”

Terry continued, “I designed the first set of plates, and really liked being able to daily-drive my car again, without worrying about beating it up. I made a few more, and sold them to my friends with FRS’s and BRZ’s, and ProTEKt was born. Since then, we have made a bunch of applications (there are no “universal” kits, each application has its own unique design and shape) and we are looking forward to many more! Along the way, there have been a few revisions, and lots of development work, mostly regarding material, fastener choices, and the shape.”

The install process is quick and very straightforward. We began by lifting our C7 up on our BendPak XPR-10ALP, although a simple floor jack and level work place will do the trick, just don’t forget to use jack stands. First we removed the existing bolts from the necessary mounting locations, and marked the bumper for the other mounting holes that need to be drilled.

Using these pilot markings, we drilled the additional mounting holes.

From there we simply set the skid plates in place, and secured them into place using a combination of factory and supplied hardware.

That completes the installation, your vehicle now has some serious protection against dips, driveways, and uneven road surfaces.

• The plates are CNC machined from high quality name brand High Density Polyethylene sheet. This marine grade material is temp and UV resistant, durable yet flexible, has a very high wear resistance, but most importantly, it has a low coefficient of friction (it is extremely slippery)  we looked at all kinds of plastic from ABS (cheap but terrible) and teflon (expensive and still not that great) and HDPE was the best by far.

• The plates are designed to use factory fasteners and holes wherever possible, and when new fasteners are required, we only use full 304 Stainless Steel nuts bolts and washers, for long term corrosion resistance. All bolts are counterbored or countersunk, to allow the plates to wear, without striking the fastener heads.

• The plates are designed to fit as closely as possible to the cars’s factory lines, for a subtle appearance, as well as to avoid creating even more ground clearance problems. these items are intended to make driving your car more practical and enjoyable, and it is not a big, jutting lip kit, or a splitter that is going provide a lever for damaging your bumper cover.

We love to see new and innovative products out there, and ProTEKt has contributed a great piece to that market. While ProTEKt currently makes skid plates for several other cars, the C7 is currently the only Corvette in their lineup. We’re hoping that they add products for the C5 and C6 to their lineup, and if they do you know you’ll hear it about it first on Corvette Online.

For more information, use the contact listed below.