Up the Coast From Los Angeles in a Corvette: Malibu, Santa Barbara, Big Sur

The run	There and back	What kind of number that is
Malibu, the pier	~45 mi	From the Westside, rounded to five. An afternoon.
Point Mugu, along the water	~95 mi	The good part of CA-1 starts past Trancas.
Malibu canyon morning	~120 mi	PCH out, Latigo or Decker up, Kanan or Mulholland back. The run most people take.
Santa Barbara, 101 both ways	~190 mi	The fast version. Three hours of driving, lunch on the water, home before the light goes.
Santa Barbara, coast road one way	~205 mi	The pretty version. Fifteen miles longer each way and worth every one.
Big Sur, to Bixby Bridge	~600 mi	Two days at the absolute minimum. Plan the middle of it.

The coast road car Corvette C8 Convertible, Red The one drive on this page where an open roof is the correct tool rather than an indulgence. Hardtop down past Trancas. Dates and rate →

Up the coast in a C8, measured rather than gestured at

Every figure here is there and back, because a rental has to come home, and rounded to the nearest five miles from the Westside where the cars go out from. The distances do not change with the car. What changes with the car is the allowance they are measured against.

Vette is the word people actually type when they mean this car. The C8 is the one most people picture on that road and the one that goes out for it most often: mid-engined, American, a 6.2-litre V8 behind your shoulders, and the least intimidating way onto those roads of anything in this half of the garage. The same figures sit in the piece that measures every drive out of this city against a day’s allowance; this page is the coast, in this car.

Santa Barbara: the fast version and the pretty one

Ninety-five miles each way on the 101 makes a hundred and ninety there and back: a comfortable single day in a two-seater, three hours or so of driving, lunch somewhere on the water, home before the light goes. It is also the dull version.

The one people actually take goes up through Malibu on the coast road, along the water to Oxnard, and joins the 101 where it meets the sea again — the better drive by a wide margin and about fifteen miles longer each way. Take it one way and the round trip lands a little past two hundred; take it both ways and you are well over, and whether that matters is entirely a question about the allowance.

For the convertible: the marine layer sits on this stretch until late morning for much of the year, so drop the roof once it burns off. The National Weather Service’s Los Angeles and Oxnard office is the forecast that actually covers this water; read it the night before rather than a phone’s city forecast, which describes weather twenty miles inland.

The Malibu morning, which is the run most people actually take

Roughly forty miles of CA-1 between Santa Monica and Mugu Rock. The first stretch through Malibu is 45 mph and heavily enforced, and it clogs from mid-morning at weekends — Sunset to Cross Creek can take half an hour on its own on a Saturday. The good part starts past Trancas, where the traffic thins and the road opens: Leo Carrillo, County Line, and finally Mugu Rock with the highway cut into the cliff and the Pacific directly below.

Turn it into a loop and it is the best morning available in a car like this one. Latigo Canyon Road leaves the coast near Latigo Beach and climbs about ten miles of near-continuous switchbacks to Kanan Dume; Decker Canyon, CA-23, leaves near Trancas and goes almost straight up in seven miles of very tight, steep turns, and is the narrower of the two by some way.

Two tips. Sand and gravel wash across the apexes after any rain, so take the first run gently; and almost nothing at this end of the market carries a spare, so a flat is one call to us and we handle it. In a C8, take Latigo up; Decker is for the narrower cars, and the driving roads guide matches each road to a car.

Big Sur is a booking with a hotel in it, not a day trip

Three hundred miles each way as far as Bixby Bridge, so six hundred there and back. That is not a day out in any car, and two days does not leave much room for stopping to look at the thing you drove up to see. Treat it as two days at the minimum, plan the middle of it, and ask for the allowance and per-mile rate with the dates, so the whole trip is priced in the quote.

Interstate travel is open to the whole fleet; we ask for notice before a rental starts so the destination is on the agreement and the mileage is planned, because the allowance is per car.

The coast road, the canyons, the 101 and everything as far north as Big Sur are inside the state line. Which colour is for what is argued out in the Corvette colour guide, and the roof on its own — including where the bags go, which decides it for two people going away — in coupe against convertible.

What it costs, and how it reaches you

Only the black coupe sits above the shared Corvette rate, and every Corvette takes one $750 refundable deposit, back 5–7 business days after the car returns; the Protection plan is priced per day off that band, and the Corvette sits in the lower of the two. A two-day coast booking is two days on the agreement whichever way the hours fall, and the allowance is two days’ worth.

Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free, delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary, and the airport is priced by the trip — $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP at the terminal, half that for one direction. On a two-boot car with a roof panel in one of them, the terminal tier earns its money if you are landing with cases. Mileage, fuel and interstate rules are in the terms, and the cars sit on the Corvette rental in Los Angeles page with their calendars.