The mid-engine Vette proved itself while snow drifting around Monticello Motor Club.
Blame it on the hype. It catches up to you the moment you climb into the low-slung cockpit of the C8. Unavoidable as the LS rumble behind me, it seeps through every panel gap and drips off every crease in the mid-engine Vette’s extroverted body. Enter Watkins Glen’s infamous outer loop and you can feel it pulling at the seams. The front end wants to push wide, the steering doesn’t say a word, and the shocking speeds feel bizarrely normal. In that moment, shaded by the shadow of what I’d hoped it’d be, the white-hot excitement burns out. With perfect weather and a perfect race track laid out ahead of me, I couldn’t find my way into loving the 2020 Corvette.
Not six months later, though, it’s cold enough that the electric top on the 2021 Corvette Convertible has taken a snow day. This time the race track is covered in a two-inch-thick layer of packed snow and sheet ice. There’s no bite in this storm, just the slow cold that soaks into your bones. Painted in greyscale from the foot-high snowbanks to the cloudy sky, the leafless forest around Monticello Motor Club feels like a different planet than the August day in paradise. It’s a wretched afternoon and a hostile environment for a sports car. There’s no grip, no runoffs on the snowed-in course, and no sticky summer rubber. Everything about this environment is worse for a sports car. But sideways on a downhill turn, I’m starting to love the C8.
DW BURNETT
This isn’t a car that excels primarily due to its highest peaks. At its best, the C8 isn’t delivering the rawness of a Miata or the screaming excitement of a Shelby GT350R. Instead, you revel in the prowess of the thing. Sure, its front end wants to push, but that’s because it’s so extraordinarily fast at such a low price that traditional mid-engine snap oversteer would be dangerous enough to stunt U.S. life expectancy. Never forget that this is a $60,000 car that accelerates to 60 about as quickly as a falling anvil. That GM could tame it at all is a stunning achievement.
One that’s easy to appreciate on sheet ice, too. The forgiving, friendly attitude of the Corvette under braking gives way to easy, steer-by-throttle slides on slick surfaces. The linear powerband of the 495-hp, 6.2-liter LS V-8 is as perfect here as it ever was, giving you endless shove that builds predictably to the low redline. There’s a part of me that always feels caught off guard when I bump into the 6500-rpm limiter in a mid-engine rocketship, but then again the whole C8-on-snow experiment is an exercise in odd sensations that don’t quite mesh with expectations. You’re in a low-slung, dramatic sports car with Ferrari proportions but a Camaro caboose. You’re countersteering with a rooster tail behind you but you’re going about 30 mph. You can outrun a lot of GT3 race cars to 60, but your redline is more Silverado than Silverstone.
So you’re always running into these oddities. Situations where you hear the muscle car rumble behind you right before the dual-clutch gearbox fires off a PDK-perfect upshift. Somewhere in the back of my brain, these sensations weren’t adding up.
In a time when all eyes are on downsized motors, turbocharging, and electrification, GM dropped another bellowy muscle car on us. But it did so while picking items off the supercar menu, adopting mid-engine geometry and dual-clutch speed without the normally attached price or livability penalties. And despite the impulses that have always guided American automakers, it didn’t just throw power at the thing until it was undrivable. It built a sports car so easy to drive, so adjustable, so easy to slide, and yet so averse to spinning that you often forget just how fast you’re going.
The most surprising thing, though, is how little the C8 asks you to sacrifice. It’s proven capable of sunny track days, snowy drift sessions, and hours of backroad driving. Yet it’s also the best daily driver sports car you can get for under six figures, as cushy as a Challenger but without the floaty vaguess. On the two-hour early morning trek to Monticello Motor Club it proved more than willing to shut off four of its cylinders, quiet down, and devour miles. Two decades in MagneRide finally delivers on its initial promise: Incredible traction on the track, luxury car ride on the road. I’ve driven more punishing Mercedes family SUVs.
Cargo space isn’t a problem, either. The big trunk and high nose give the C8 more awkward styling than its mid-engine competition, but you can’t ignore the payoff. From racing helmets to groceries, it’s hard to think of anything two people would need for a proper getaway that the C8 couldn’t swallow. That’s true of both the convertible and coupe, as the power folding top doesn’t steal an inch of cargo space. Still, considering the $7500 price penalty and the fact that all “coupes” are actually targas with manually removable roof panels, the standard car seems like the better play.
Of course, you can also get decent ride quality in a McLaren 720S or most modern Ferraris. With enough frunk room, you can even delude yourself into thinking they’re daily drivable. Those cars are so insistent in their need to feel special that it’s hard to imagine anyone actually doing it. A McLaren may not jostle you too much over a speed bump, but the creaky carbon tub makes it sound like your $300,000 supercar is about to snap in half. An F8 may have nice seats, but as soon as you encounter a steep driveway you might as well start walking. And even if you can get around that, it’s so expensive and delicate that it’s hard to get over the risks of dragging it to the grocery store.
The C8, meanwhile, is a Chevy. It looks wild and gets plenty of attention, sure. But put a dent in the door and you won’t go bankrupt. You’ll never really worry about its engine breaking, while its nose can clear anything you’ll encounter in suburbia. Most of all, it’s not precious: Corvettes are meant to be driven, driven a lot, and driven hard. You don’t have to feel bad about throwing snow tires on one, either. Not only does it love to drift through snowbanks, but the composite body means you don’t have to worry about rust. It is a true one-car solution, a car that excels not for its best-case scenario but for its ability to tackle every situation with the same baseline competency, V-8 rumble, and predictable dynamics that make it an incredible everyday sports car.
Source: Mack Hogan for Road&Track