2020 Corvette first drive: America's supercar fighter - Shot in 4K

The mid-engine Corvette is finally here, it's finally in production, and it's finally heading to dealerships across the country, which means I can finally answer all those questions that have been on my mind since I

first

saw this last year. past, this is the biggest generational change the Corvette has seen, so I want to know things like is it still practical enough for everyday driving, can it hold up to a day of abuse at the racetrack, does it still sound good and it still offers the best value for money on the market basically what i want to know is is this still a Corvette the

first

question of course is does it still look like a Corvette and that's a little debatable to be honest I'm going to I'm going to go out on a limb and say that even without the badging, most people could pick this out of a lineup like a Corvette, but it's still certainly a radical departure from the old one and That general profile is much more exotic than the C7 or any other.

Previous generation Corvette for that matter, the nose is much shorter to the slightly longer tail as you'd expect, but the biggest change visually is actually those massive air intakes right after the doors that keep the v8 of 6.2 liters cooled, the new LT 2 is, of course. the heart of the beast now fully on display in its new location closer to the center of the car the new engine makes more power than before up to 490 horsepower from last year's 455 and 465 pound-feet of torque from the 455 but opted for the performance exhaust we have here and you're looking at a slightly tastier 495 horsepower not to mention a 0-60 time of under 3 seconds plus a much earlier exhaust note Chevrolet has done a great job of packaging here keeping the Corvette trademark removable Targa roof and giving you trunk space to store it but we're in the latest generation car you could still fit a few bags and the roof on the rear hatch on the new Corvette you almost certainly there can be no good there.

It's a front end this time from an overall aesthetic standpoint, the Corvette is definitely an eye-catcher, but I have to say it's all a bit too busy for me with too many fussy lines and styling cues, the problem extending to the interior. I've been lucky enough to

drive

every generation of Corvette yes even the c1 with it's scary brakes and three foot wide steering wheel and of course this feels like a spaceship compared to that but even compared with the c7 the previous generation

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feels radically different first thing is it feels a lot more shrinkable than before and i think part of that is because i have a glass of peanut here where before of course i had a open cargo bay, but also the way the cabins are laid out. designed to really highlight the

drive

r and really feel like I'm tucked in here which is great as long as you're the driver if you're the passenger you're out of luck a lot of the controls for the HVAC for example are along this kind of row of silly looking buttons that run down the right hand side from temperature to fan speed see here the controls they're all here they're all facing me which is good as a controller but if you're the one passenger and you want to change the temperature you might have a bit of a hard time doing it the nav system is also facing me too i have buttons scattered all over this ridiculous row and the right other hud controls are on the bottom left everything is a bit more spread out and i don't really like it that much but i like the seating position i feel like i'm sitting low i feel like i'm in the middle of the car which L is great and ultimately this is a really cool place to be but probably the biggest step up over materials from the C7 everything here looks and feels fantastic right from the Alcantara on the wheel.

I have carbon fiber trim around a lot of different things including t The plastics feel like they are on a different level compared to what we had on the last generation Corvette and that definitely makes it feel like a much more premium car. , maybe even as a mid-engined European car at the moment, we've mostly been working on. around the speed limit because we're on the highways and we've been in Tour mode which is a more comfortable way to drive this car here we have the LT 3 option package and the z51 performance package on this car which means we've got a very comfortable drive right now the brakes have also been modulated to be a little easier to modulate the steering is nice and light and that new 8 speed dual clutch transmission which is the only transmission for now It basically feels like automatic, but with the twist of a knob and a little patience, it takes about three seconds to switch modes.

Annoyingly it can go from a sport mode and then it goes to track mode and then the fun starts and we're at the racetrack now at the CH w I'm in track mode at Spring Mountain which is about an hour to Las Vegas . This is a really cool facility. A perfectly nice place to put this to the test in track mode. It feels like a completely different car. Of course, we will feel. because the magnetorheological suspension can dynamically tune and adapt based on what I'm doing and what I'm doing right now is pushing it to say the least the transmission can of course also be tuned to get that HP DCT which has super shifting quickies get a lot more aggressive here I'm running manual mode right now and probably don't need to be a bit more fun that way Jeremiah says he wired these chip panels directly to the traffic stream to give it more responsive shifting basically Aeneas fit and i have to say i don't know if that's marketing fluff or what but it hurts every time you touch this palette you get the kit right away there is no lag or delay and this will absolutely keep that kit in the Revlon shape you can bounce off the rev limiter as long as you want.

This thing will not automatically increase the chips. That's pretty good. I'm going to make my custom driving mode, which you can do. I'd downplay this to make it more touring oriented and less resistant to a steering mode, but perhaps the coolest thing about the c8 is that the brake pressure changes depending on which mode you're in. It's got basically a brick by wire system they call it eBoost similar to what's fine on the NSX and a couple others don't let new cars on the road right now that basically means what I feel like when I put my foot on the left pedal with My left foot, it's almost a completely synthetic feel, so while I'm running and spinning here in the desert, if it were a hot day for example, I wouldn't really feel the brakes fade, the car would do more, let's take care of it. and it gives me a really strong consistent pedal feel after lap r lap after lap hums the first lap and that's a good thing yeah ok it disconnects me a bit more from the car if I was worried about overheating brakes , it would be a little bit less feedback to me but in a short period like we're doing today just a couple of laughs means it's just a nice constant feedback all the time but it also means to hit the road you have easier to modulate brake pedal that's a good thing so that's all about how the car works adapt track mode it feels track but very good car will understeer car will oversteer basically , it will do what you want it to do and that's really what you want, it feels great, neutrally balanced and really aggressive on the steering. the feedback is really strong.

I feel like as soon as I make any steering input the Amelie car reacts and that's because I'm sitting 16 and a half inches further forward than I was in the last generation Corvette which means as soon as I turned the wheel, I'm actually sorry because I'm a little bit closer to that moment than the turning radius and it's a little bit closer to my hip, so even though this is a bigger, heavier car than last year on the track and means I can push a little harder for the rump, this Spring Mountain course has a series of long left and right corners that if I were driving a normal car with a normal oil pan sitting under the oil sloshing back and forth as you go from left to right.

Starvation issues but a great test for first time understeer this is great although this is a great test for the new dry sump system they have on the new V8 this year. Chevrolet engineers told me that the Corvette will have 1.25 G hold laterally with no oil starvation issues, that's pretty remarkable because it's not likely that because of this, for a long time your average race track will also say this e51 package that it has some extra cooling is good enough to basically do a long pull session however you want at 100 degrees Fahrenheit without the car overheating.

They said you could put a full tank of gas on a lap around here on a hundred degree day or the car would never overheat and that's how air conditioning on is pretty awesome. I won't prove that today is actually closer to 50 degrees today, in fact I'm hot today, but if you live in a place like this and want to do this kind of thing in the summer, that's good to know and that's also very encouraging. yeah maybe you've heard some great stuff in the news about prevention of terrorism what about this booth it felt a little claustrophobic on the street here it feels pretty good i got a good brace for my knees so i can lean against the side of the car and there's enough padding not to bruise your knees which can be a problem when you're going through such technical courses like this the car certainly sounds a lot better here like Well people think a mid engined car must necessarily sound better than a front-engined one.

As a mid-engined car owner, don't get too excited, it's just a MR2. I can tell you that, in fact, that is not always the case. just cruising around town in the c8

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before the effect is a little more like a sewing machine than a big v8 because really what you get is a lot of valve noise here on the track in track mode with the sport exhaust wide open and I missed my 20 break by about a mile maybe I was weighing that one now this track has changed a lot since I was last here it's growing a lot this whole facility is growing a lot so I'm not very familiar.

With this track it's pretty tricky but I feel like I can get out here and attack right away and feel very comfortable in this car and I think it's like blowing a back suction on the road the new Corvette is just as comfortable and practical as it ever was And thanks to the new TR intake, you don't have to choose between the comfort of an automatic and the performance of a manual, you get the best of both worlds, that's doubly true here at the racetrack where this thing is an absolute demon. , so is this thing. still the performance offering this thing once was still a corvette the answer is a resounding yes thats what i think of a new corvette but we want to know what you think let us know in the comments like share and subscribe and check it out Check out the calm road show for all the details