What We Learned After Testing a Chevy C8 Corvette Over 40,000 Miles | Car and Driver

hey welcome to Car and Driver you know we have a fleet of vehicles that we test for about a year we call it a long-term test and in that period we aim to put on about 40 000 miles now this includes real world driving performance testing and track testing and real winter too and we believe this aggressive testing cycle should tell you what a vehicle is like to live with in the first few years of ownership as well as highlight any potential problem areas now we did just that with this 2021 Chevrolet Corvette and we're going to go over what it was like to live with what we liked what we didn't like and what you should expect if you're going to buy one [Music] our Corvette was solidly equipped with the 2LT equipment group that adds niceties like a heated steering wheel heated and ventilated seats a comprehensive exterior camera system and so on we also added the front axle lift to avoid scraping the nose on the performance side we got the must-have z51 package that includes things like an upgraded electronically controlled limited slip differential upgraded exhaust and a shorter final drive we also ordered the fancy Magneto rheological dampers and the Red Mist paint altogether this Corvette set us back roughly eighty thousand dollars foreign so let's get the obvious out of the way this is a great sports car it feels good pretty much in every condition that's because the steering has enough accuracy and feel the transmission shifts with authority quickly too but never with any harshness and the handling makes every two-lane road or freeway on-ramp or exchange a good excuse to have a lot of fun it also makes the numbers we recorded 60 mile an hour in 2.9 seconds the quarter in 11.2 seconds a 70 mile an hour stop at 148 feet and a skid pad average lateral G of 1.03 that used to be super car stuff consider that the C8 was the first car we tested under 100 Grand to go sub three seconds to 60 miles an hour even if you hate the performance number arms race you have to appreciate the performance per dollar here I love the 6.2 liter V8 behind us so you get 495 horsepower from the z51 package specifically but the thing you gotta remember is that this is the last and naturally aspirated V8 mid-engine sports car you can get that makes it special but you also have to remember there's this like underlying web of these really sophisticated electronic controls that you don't really notice while driving but they're always improving the experience the electronic differential for example looks at things like how fast you're going or what pedals you're using your tire attempt to bias torque left and right which is really neat there's a really sophisticated electronic stability control system with different levels and you can go through them and it actually helps you drive faster on race tracks if you're a novice there's also the exterior camera system that you can overlay with vehicle sensors and look at the video later to improve lap times or you can just use it as a dash cam it's all really really cool but it's the Corvette's year-round practicality is what makes it a standout now of course we took this to Virginia International Raceway for hot laps and of course we took it on road trips but we also ran errands with it we took it to Costco and Home Depot in the dead of winter we took it hunting in many ways we use this like a compact SUV and not a sports car there are a lot of reasons that allowed us to do that with the Corvette but the two standouts are the ride quality and the storage space now these Magnetic Ride Control dampers have both the adjustability and bandwidth that allows for driving on a race track and commuting on pothole Laden roads in the dead of winter and the cargo space now you have to keep in mind this is a two-door two-seat sports car but within that context you have a lot of storage space the front can hold a carry-on and a duffel bag back here we fit golf clubs golf bags more luggage you could even put the roof in here when you want to take it off to enjoy a spring day and it's easy to do one person because the roof's carbon fiber where many people shelter their fun cars we drive ours year round and that brings us to Winter and the other Seasons that are unique to Michigan like false winter Second Spring pothole season mud season construction season and so on it's amusing to think that the headquarters of traditional U.S auto manufacturers is in one of the most devastating states to cars but we digress anyway we fitted the C8 with original equipment size Michelin Pilot Alpine pa4s and ventured out in the below zero temperatures we got looks of disbelief or discussed as the paint turned to a grayish Frozen slurry of Road Grime paired with Michigan's finest uncut blue road salt having the bulk of the vehicle's Mass over the rear wheels certainly helps with traction but so too does the winter Drive modes that dial back throttle sensitivity and shift firmness that helps you be smooth now some of us live in areas where they don't plow the roads during winter and those people had to use the front axle lift to help the C8 from not becoming a snow plow itself we also learned that if you park outside in a heavy snowfall which some of us did it's better to clean the snow off the rear glass before you lift the rear hatch or better yet use the remote start so the heat from the engine can cook off that snow before you want to access the trunk overall you can drive the Corvette year-round in Michigan and that's really cool what didn't we like well we found it difficult to dwell on the often trivial shortcomings here's a few because the trunk sits right behind the engine and right above the exhaust it gets a little toasty back here at least it can so if you just bought some delicious fudge from Mackinac Island don't put it in here put it in the front or else it'll melt like with many mid-engine cars rear visibility can be an issue and the Corvette particularly you have two panes of glass to look through and both require frequent cleaning of dust and water that gets up there through the engine bay you can partially remedy this by using the rear view camera system but if you're prone to motion sickness like I am that's not a great solution so you just kind of have to deal with it the Corvette's also kind of a pain in the butt to keep clean the owner's manual advises against driving through drive-through car washes but we did that anyway because who wants to you know hand clean your Corvette in January and Michigan one of the key issues though is that these vents right here just drop water into the engine bay so this is a place that you have to spend extra amount of time on keeping clean if you really want your Corvette to look its best remember the Corvette's Great Wall of HVAC as I like to call it it was kind of a punch line for the Corvette when it was first announced and when somebody sits in this car for the first time it still looks a little weird but over a time with some familiarity it becomes pretty easy to use and you actually stop noticing it after a while we couldn't find a way to do big Smoky brake stands with this thing which is quite a bit of a bummer I mean there's a race start function built into the car where you hold both shift paddles go wide open throttle and release them and it does a you know a quick acceleration with a little bit of Tire smoke foreign but if you want a real Smoky burnout this may not be the car for you that's a disappointment this is a 500 horsepower American rear-wheel drive sports car burnouts like should be in the operation manual lastly this is not a car for the anti-social if you want to avoid parking lot conversations with people who just want to chat about the car do not buy a C8 Corvette it gets a lot of attention [Applause] is rated by the EPA at 19 MPG combined and over 40 000 miles we average 20 MPG essentially matching that figure but that's the combined figure which includes City MPG and let's be honest the Corvette isn't great there where it excels is on the freeway thanks to tall gearing and cylinder deactivation that lets this V8 run on four cylinders and up with kind of like a V4 mode uh cruising at freeway speeds you can get excellent fuel economy in fact when we measured it at a cruising at 75 miles an hour like we do with all vehicles we recorded 26 MPG that's not bad for a 500 horsepower naturally aspirated V8 when it comes to service the Corvette was generally straightforward with the usual oil changes oil filter and air cabin filter that said the Dual clutch transmission was another issue entirely we're told that accessing the filler neck is complicated and time consuming and the filter and fluid are really expensive we paid 540 bucks to service the transmission and you need to do that every 22 000 miles after the first service which is free from Chevy so make sure you take advantage of that outside of that we had a few warranty repairs one for an airbag light another for a touch screen related issue our only real problem was the air conditioning compressor took a dump while we were lapping at VIR was it because the AC was overworked while we were lapping on the track or was it just a coincidence we don't know what we do know is that driving from Virginia to Michigan with no AC or defrost is an unpleasant experience we could say at the least but fortunately Chevy took care of that under warranty lastly it's really cool that the C8 comes with a street alignment setting and a really aggressive track alignment setting just know that transitioning between the two is costly because it takes a lot of work it also means you have to refine a suspension shop or a Chevy service department that really knows their stuff the rear suspension of the C8 and the C7 is unique in that as you dial in negative camber you have to make sure that you maintain zero degrees of rear caster and that's something you don't have to do with any other car I can think of if you don't watch that you end up with a really undesirable handling Corvette on a racetrack which isn't great and if you ask most suspension shops to watch out for that they'll give you weird looks because that's not a thing you do with most cars but you have to do it with these Corvettes we also broke a few things the wheels specifically when we took this into a shop to get the winter tires installed something we couldn't do at our own shop because the wheel offset meant they wouldn't fit our machine but I digress they told us that all four wheels were bent which surprised us because we didn't notice anything from driving the car we took it to another shop to get a second opinion and yeah all four wheels were bent so that tells you either that was really good wheel balancing wheel weights or a really good suspension or some design some combination of both wheel weights and the Magnetic fluid filled dampers anyway we had all four wheels repaired for 125 dollars a piece we also hit some road debris on the front end which caused some thankfully cosmetic damage to the under tray which we also repaired for about 470 dollars [Music] foreign over the past 40 000 miles well the Corvette's a great car you get the performance you would hope from a sports car but also usability and functionality that you wouldn't expect and it's those things together that make it an excellent daily driver yes even here in Michigan it's also easy to see why it's won three consecutive 10 best Awards and I'm gonna be sad to see it go oh hope isn't lost though because there's a Z06 right around the corner foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Car and Driver

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Keywords: Car and driver, chevrolet corvette, chevy corvette, corvette corvette, c8 corvette, corvette, corvette c8, corvette stingray, c8, chevy, chevrolet

Id: u7YfAlDYMVE

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022