Gadgetory

few cars are as storied as the vet fact 60 years ago we got the first one fifty years ago the first stingray version and now it's all back together again for Gen 7 the 2014 Corvette Stingray let's take a tour of this new seventh generation event first of all proportions are about the same and by the way they point out they're remarkably close to a Porsche 911 I've never really seen that in it look at the front of this guy there's a lot of Ferrari DNA in here I mean this is a very different face easiest way to spot the new vet the hood is carbon fiber very very light same thing goes for the roof panel all these guys have carbon fiber roofs you can't see it underneath here all aluminum frame and subframes which is stock now on every single one of the new vets and of course a lot of these fenders and other panels are made of sheet molding compound a high-tech plastic so I'm not sure you can get a fridge magnet to stick to this car anywhere now it gets real controversial back here these taillights this whole cluster here is either the new look of Corvette or if you're more of a doubter in the various chat rooms and forums a travesty that is too much Camaro or Malibu very unique here these are the trumpets of hell these things go to a dual exhaust system out to four tips that has this mechanical actuator that opens up a valve back here for a whole lot more bellow and more flow they say can actually add five horse and five foot pounds if you have the performance exhaust system little free flow does one okay now the roofs a big story on this new vent all of the supposed hardtop actually have a liftoff roof you can't get a true hardtop bet at least not yet in this seventh generation you can get these in body color clear carbon or four thousand dollars optional a clear smoke stop that could be kind of cool now let's put it away you put this into these front clips drop it in here snaps into place how do you get your luggage in and out of there well the Front's are kind of like pivots so you can still get here like it's a lid kind of clever and does not clobber too much of your rear cargo space alright the first big news about the new vet is the cabin they've upholstered basically everything no hard plastic under sheeting is really showing except of very few places and the texture there is nice as well now you may have already noticed the other way they've upholstered this cargo upholstered it with LCDs this one carries Chevy MyLink nothing dramatically new here we've seen this before in Chevy vehicles over here though is very different this is the instrument panel for the Vette the main panel is full of LCD though notice you've still got us mechanical speedo and a mechanical fuel gauge and temperature gauge however what's in the middle there is very cool you could either be in Eco mode yes there's an eco mode on the Vette will talk about mpg in a minute it's pretty darn good kick it again you go to touring this is kind of your everyday driving mode that isn't tuned down for eco hit it one more time now you go to sport look what happens you get very tachometer centric and you pick up two more virtual gauges for oil pressure and oil temperature and your last click over to the right is the track mode when you do that you get a hockey stick rpm bar and you also get your trap times best previous and current for actual track runs when you're using your launch control in combination with that I've got the best HUD yet on American car it's quite bright and if I go through the information button right here I can change it from the hockey stick tack traditional tack there my g-forces who did 1.25 G's wish I was on that ride now our drive controls the car sitting in right now has an automatic 6-speed automatic this is car they'll sell a lot of but the more interesting car has an all-new 7-speed manual well get some time with that in the road they all have a mode selector right here which as I showed you changes up the dash but more than that it changes twelve parameters of the vehicle from the tip in of the accelerator transmission behavior suspension behavior how the limited-slip behaves is electronically controlled on this car and all manner of other things around the vehicle so it really does change personality and when the engine bay of the new vet is an interesting story Tale of Two Cities one modern one not so much here's what's modern 6.2 liter v8 the Corvette and it does have direct injection for the first time as well as variable valve timing an active cylinder management this guy can shut down from eight to four cylinders I'll talk about that in a minute here's what's old this is still an overhead valve pushrod engine they decided not to go with overhead cams because of height the designers wanted to package this nose nice and low and to add a stack of cams up here would have brought things up know about here so the cams buried down the valley the way it used to be and keeps the top a little lower doesn't seem to hurt the numbers inning 455 the horse 460 foot-pounds of torque they're the 64 this car about 3,300 pounds comes in around four seconds a little under four if you get the z51 Performance Package here's the real payoff they got some good mpg out of this gun 1729 with an average of 21 and a big part of that is because this guy runs on four cylinders as I mentioned earlier when it can you may think that's kind of a limp home or a cruising mode but because this engine is so big four cylinders of this half of this guy it's still a pretty Rorty engine so they say this car can run on four cylinders a lot even kind of in a performance way first of all the power delivery on this guy's real linear thundering but linear you don't get this big pop at the beginning you've got a nice even fat torque and power curve and that's what Chevy said they did with this guy increasingly over the sixth-generation it doesn't come on alarmingly but it comes on big I hit that paddle now I'm in rev-match mode now watch this I go into a downshift without touching the throttle that's automatic I didn't do sit and it matches my rpms now I gotta say this it's kind of slow I can do it faster than that but if you're not great at driving a stick especially with 460 on tap this is a nice aid now Chevy says this car in stock trim will turn a G on the skid pad on the autocross track you really get a taste to that it's much more directionally nimble than I recall a Corvette at least the last time we drove one a couple of years ago I'll tell you this the driving dynamics of this car don't feel dramatically different than the last bet we had and there's a reason for that Corvette still a Corvette the layout is iconic as a result you're not suddenly gonna have some mid-engine turbo v6 car with a car but we're gonna kind of drive the way it drives big moves on this car and you can just come around the corner all day long with that nice linear power and we're pushing it and this car feels stuck right down like a big ol super glue factory leaked all over okay some downsides it still is a relatively shall we say gutsy feeling in the interior there's quite a bit of cabin noise the vibration is definitely well managed though I got to get back the shifter could be better the clutch travel is nice but this shifters a bit much your top three gears I believe are over dry that's interesting probably an EPA strategy 5 6 & 7 things get a little wandering out there it's not as clean as I like it on that part of the gate and the rev matching thing like I say I can do better there's a lack of legroom on the passenger's side I'm six-two and I cannot ride comfortably there for more than about 20 minutes before it's claustrophobic I can't get enough legroom and it's still a little bit tight in here I mean Corvettes are not known rubbing a lot of space they're not a big car but something about this big massive centre structure here seems to make it more so all day long all day now the Corvette for all its performance remains well they want me to say this or not a value leader about 52 delivered for your base coupe add $5,000 if you want it convertible another paltry 2,800 bucks to get to the hotter z51 trim and a thousand bucks for that clear liftoff top that's optional above the base carbon-fiber roof the Corvette has not changed essential DNA it's a big ol brawny front-engine rear-drive being American classic but they've definitely evolved this car to a point that many thought it couldn't get just a few years ago