C8 Corvette vs Lexus LC 500 - Cars for Golf? - Everyday Driver Season 8

[Music] it might seem a little weird at first glance but i think we should talk about cars and golf not the volkswagen golf cars and the game of golf the most common thing that is referenced when an automaker is making a convertible is can it hold golf clubs you want to put clubs in the trunk and then go to the golf course and stop driving your car which is inexplicable to me okay these are the cars that you can the two cars are the lexus lc500 convertible and the eighth generation corvette stingray convertible the lexus as it is as this one is hundred and eleven thousand dollars it's an expensive car it's a nice car it better be good the corvette even though it will be marked up by dealerships it's eighty-five thousand dollars if you're looking at the lexus and you're interested in the lc 500 for any reason how good it looks what it can do the cruising thing you have to pay attention to the corvette so here we have a mid-engine sports car completely rethought by gm for the first time in its entire lineage they have made a world competitive exotic mid-engine car that is also affordable and yet it still is concerned with where do my golf clubs go now as a person that drives and doesn't play golf i don't understand this but it's important because it is affecting car design the entire build sheet for the corvette included that so let's talk about cars for golf you're watching everyday driver we make a tv show podcast and youtube channels dedicated to great cars driving adventures and helping you find a car you'll love subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss a thing i really do like how the lexus looks i love the ethos of lexus and i love that they're trying to do the man plus machine thing not only in the styling but in the rest of the car and how it drives by taking the top off it's gotten very heavy for all the torsional rigidity and the adhesives and everything else they've done to strengthen the car you feel that in the styling it doesn't look delicate in light it feels heavy and grounded interestingly i think this car is going to look good 20 years from now 30 years from now 40 50 i think it will be a classic example of the manifestation of this styling that crisp beautiful styling theme which i think is based more on airflow and actually how designers sketch now you walk around the car and you look for things where lines disappear or they converge or they wrap around the car lexus has done an amazing job making this car a beautiful sculptural object [Music] on the inside i like the materials i like what lexus has done the materials just feel robust this thing feels like it's going to last forever you can beat on this thing and it'll be great the materials in here at 30 000 more expensive don't feel any better than they do in the corvette lexus has this wrist rest here and this controller that is a touch pad a terrible idea for driving it has haptic feedback when you hit certain things but i'll give you a great example heated seats it is four layers down in the menu and when you get there it isn't on turn it on turn it off you have to swipe on the touchpad the amount that you properly want for levels of the heated seats or levels of the cooled seats it's a swipe motion that you're having to pay attention to while you drive this is a terrible usage idea for actually having a driver's car the theme of this car was absolutely aircraft in aerospace but for a modern age you can see that talon right on the side here that side blade with the intake i like the look of the convertible even more than the coupe and i'm surprised to say that i like it top up and top down more than i like the look of the coop i'm not a fan of dark colors but this is one of those designs that's so new and so striking it doesn't matter what color it comes in it feels like a comfortable low set involving place to be for both driver and passenger there are a lot of screens you've got the one in front of you that is fully configurable depending upon your drive mode you've got the one here that does all of your other controls including audio apple carplay android auto etc but the things you're going to use the most guess what chevy gave us buttons there's actual tactical things to interact with for the stuff you're going to use the most the way you put this car in gear is right here under your hand it looks a little bit intimidating at first but all these are are switches that you pull up or you push but then you gotta combine that with the mode switch right here under this palm rest so you go from my mode into tour into sport and then all the way to track what's also interesting is the z button and homage to zora arcus dunta the father of the corvette right on your steering wheel so this is your customized mode that is programmed to the z button on the steering wheel it's that little homage to him [Music] everyday driver is brought to you by covercraft use the code every day for 10 off your order ah yes the power that's the best part of this car despite weighing over 4 500 pounds i wouldn't call it slow this is a 5 liter v8 471 horsepower and just under 400 pound feet of torque every time i drive anything with this big v8 from lexus i just think this is pretty cool engine it's got a good voice it feels like it's got some genuine personality and it wants to have some fun and it's not allowed to we don't do that at lexus we don't have fun we just are nice with enough power so quiet don't be quiet you have a convertible i think building the lfa caused lexus to think a little bit naughty and that's what i want out of lexus driving this car i listen to that engine i think oh that just makes me want to misbehave but the rest of the car will not cooperate as far as giving me a feeling of raw driving enthusiasm the lexus has a 10 speed transmission and it's just an automatic if any car needed a dual clutch it's this one and 10 gears can we stop stop with the gears it didn't make it better it just saves gas who cares you're about the driving experience we must talk about this lovely engine and what it does to the character of the car gm has decided to put the lt2 engine which is a direct descendant of the lt1 engine into the c8 corvette [Music] it's properly matched to this car it's an old-school feel and i can hear the lifters every time i'm revving out you can hear the lifters at low rpm i'm just i'm hearing them right here yeah hear the exhaust back here and you've got to have the top down to do this but i'm hearing the old school nature of this engine as i'm driving in a modern mid-engine very well-balanced platform this convertible does have the z51 package which means it actually has the exact same horsepower as the coupe that we had that means in z51 trim it has 495 horsepower 470 pound-feet of torque this has a lot of power and maintains that unbelievable less than three second zero to sixty i think it's an automotive journalism cliche at this point to claim every car would be made better by offering a manual transmission i don't think it's true especially in the c8 there's some cars i'll concede that and don't get me wrong i love manual transmissions but this one continually puts that power onto the ground and you're going to be so engaged by the chassis and how well this car handles that you won't care it doesn't come in a manual which if you're gonna do the golf cruise thing i kind of think that makes a manual even more important for a little bit of involvement but i realize we don't want to be bothered we have the eight-speed dual clutch and it is quick there will be future versions of this car that are far more powerful and there will be future versions of this car that are going to be hybrid you know it's coming but for right now this is the best balance in the era that we're in this is the best balance of sound and beauty and natural aspiration that is unmatched everyday driver is brought to you by hagerty let's drive together [Music] first drive in this car means you will experience a very immediate feel to the handling but at no point does it ever disguise its weight this thing is wearing 21 inch wheels and tires and they've got michelin pilot sports which is a brilliant performance tire but the weight overcomes the handling of this car every time to cut the top off lexus has strengthened this car in just about every area from adhesives to gussets to adding torsional pieces actual more heavy parts to strengthen the car which means it's brilliantly stiff and handles quite well it's very immediate but the car is too heavy it's 4540 pounds with the engine in the front this lexus actually has more in common with older corvettes now that means the lc500 has steering weight but candidly just no feel you have no idea what the tires are doing and as a result it takes away a lot of your confidence as to exactly where am i putting the car and how is it going to respond because frankly i'm not really sure if you're on a road that just has some speed and some occasional sweepers that have got nice long wide radiuses this is gonna feel pretty special top down makes it good it's got nice inputs the problem is when the road compresses and gets tighter and asks more of the car then the lexus can't keep up now i'm not saying it can't navigate a corner but there's still filters between you and the driving experience i want more from this handling i want it to feel more raw and i think lexus could justify building a lighter more raw feeling car in the two-door coupe and convertible their other cars fine they have built their reputation on being new levels of refinement but when you hear that shouldn't there be more here shouldn't be a lighter weight more of a driver's car i think so it is a golf car it is a car for the country club it is a car for golfing it isn't a car for driving fast this road has completely baffled this car that 4 500 pounds of weight which is a lot for a car of this size that is never hidden when you ask this car to do anything you can feel that weight being tossed around like you in the cabin you can feel when you hit the brakes that all the weight jumps forward when you hit the accelerator all of it jumps back when you go into a corner it hops to the opposite corner of the car [Applause] [Music] yeah i've got to slow down much more than i want to to make the corners because i'm just not confident that the car is going to do it listen to that that's horrifying the tires are so much better than this car will allow them to be it's too heavy it's too soft that was a little scary we're shooting this late in the fall in utah and that means they've actually put full winter tires on this press car then yet this is the better place to drive hard there's confidence here and an awareness of what the car is doing that the lexus just can't match now part of that is the difference in weight this weighs about 3 700 pounds the lexus weighs almost a thousand pounds more you combine that with the mid engine feel of this which means that the nose is actually pretty light so when you give it a steering input you can actually feel the changes going all the way down to the pavement in the lexus it's just numb the engineering team has designed this central tunnel here with a center of gravity on the inside of your hip that's the rotation point right here and i can feel it i'm thinking about that as i'm going through these very tight curves this road is not really built for high speed it's fun to feel the dynamics of what the engineering team designed and built it's interesting to feel the honesty of what they built it's not like a marketing team has decided well the center of gravity and let me tell you how it should be and we're kind of there all the descriptions about this car match exactly what you feel when you drive it [Applause] what i like is that this is a dual personality convertible and because it's a mid-engine with this really good steering feel it actually still feels special going slow however you you shouldn't go slow you should find a road and try this car for real because the dynamics here they're wasted on your run to the country club unless your country club is over a twisty mountain road and you spend an hour on a twisty mountain road to get to the country club to play golf that actually might be exactly where this car fits that's where it deserves to be because the driving experience here is so well done and so special for such a low cost it's hard to find a really good rival [Music] everyday driver is brought to you by griot's garage use the code every day for 10 off your order despite my desire for lexus to go on a bender and get an embarrassing tattoo somewhere and become a little naughty okay a lot naughty i want something more the engine suggests to me some more raw mechanical feel to this car but everything else is so refined it doesn't give you that real sports car driving feel this car driven at just about as fast as your average suv feels very nice very inviting and pleasing but if i'm on a back road this good i want the car to show me something i want to find what's good about it i want to come on yeah i want to hear the personality i want to lean into the corners i want to enjoy the dynamics of the great road and the lexus doesn't like that very much [Music] the more time i spend around the c8 corvette the more i love it i would drive it all year round and you can which is the brilliance of this car i feel much more confident going quickly in this c8 than i do driving the lexus doing anything in the corvette c8 i'm surprised to discover that this is a car where i think the convertible is the better one to get the more you think about it the more these two cars compete against each other from a sales perspective it's not necessarily performance at this level because the performance isn't all the way there from a sports car perspective after all we're still using golf as the metric to measure our sports car performance what other sport can you think of that affects the design and engineering of cars great point yeah the list is very short and here we are at golf but nevertheless keep driving your car i can't believe that here we are eight generations into the corvette and we're still thinking about volcanic carry golf clubs maybe it's a historical thing maybe we have to now just for the history based on history alone fine about golf clubs i wish we didn't but here's the thing that's great about it both of these i think are better than the reputation is for a car that is a convertible built for golf in spite of the fact that both of these aren't as good as each other the corvette is definitely the better driver's car and it is the least compromised as a convertible of any corvette to this point and that's really cool but i still think both of them are better as drivers cars than the reputation would suggest and i still don't think they're going to be driven very hard they're just not i do like alexis and i admit to you that it will be a sought-after sports car for a long time to come but for me it's the corvette this lc500 is a good job of maintaining the reputation of lexus vehicles for being interesting luxurious long lasting and in this case a soft golf cruiser because it isn't a sports car [Music] this is why i love the c8 so much it's modern it's brilliant it handles very well and it's old school it's still a hot rod buried down in there we've driven all the generations of the corvette and we really like this 8th gen because we're guys that like mid-engine cars it's been discussed as a possible mid engine frankly forever it finally is one here and they did make it special [Music] [Applause] see a little naughty this car makes me want to go spray paint a freeway overpass or something like that or steal something just just a little naughty oh those aspen are really nice got beautiful trunks me and the lexus are now one

Channel: EverydayDriver

Views: 185,186

Keywords: Corvette C8 Convertible, Lexus LC 500 Convertible, C8 vs LC500, Comparison, Best convertible, Best Golf Car, Driving or Golf, Country club cars, everyday driver, c8 convertible review, lc 500 convertible review

Id: 41gUvWDRYAE

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021