[The HACK]

I'm going to do my best to offer you all my typical long winded, but somewhat honest perspective on things because, well, I own both a BMW and a Corvette right now.

First, before we all get TOO excited that the C8 is going to offer supercar like performance for 1/3rd the price...Guys, that's been the Chevrolet Corvette formula for decades. Is this really a game changer? Yes, no and maybe.

Yes the rear wheel drive, mid engine platform is really THAT good, and to be able to offer THE cheapest mid engine car on market outside o Alfa Romeo's 4C, that is something else no other manufacturer can lay a claim to. It's unique, it looks fantastic, and it's surely going to get Corvette out of its death spiral of ever aging demographics*.

No, as in the C7 WAS a game changer. The C7 Grand Sport lapped Laguna Seca faster than the Ferrari F458 and a slew of other exotics. It is an insane amount of car for the price, and short of cars wearing a crest with the prefix "GT" in front of a number, or any other cars costing in excess of $300,000, not many cars can beat the C7 in a straight line or in the twisties. Heck, going back another generation, the C6 Z06 offered insane amount of performance for the price, and frankly not even cars with a dancing horse can keep up on track. Mid engine or not, the Corvette has ALWAYS been an insane value proposition, at least since the C5 generation. But has it really stopped anyone buying Porsches, BMWs, and the likes? NO.

Maybe, as there are a ton of unknowns on this new chassis. Before we all go ahead and crown the new C8 as the greatest car made since the old Acura NSX, keep this in mind. Back when the NSX came out, heaps of praises were lavished on the supposed supercar killer. "What?! Ferrari performance, mid engine exoticness, and all for less than 1/2 the price?" All the game changer talk about the NSX eventually went nowhere as people soon realized that buying at this stratosphere, brand name, cache, and a little bit of snobbiness goes a very long way. What eventually doomed the NSX wasn't that it wasn't attainable, but it was TOO attainable. With the market shifting to electric, autonomous, and utilitarian (SUVs and cross overs), this so-called game changer is coming out at the most inopportune time, in that it may fundamentally alter a small subset of the automotive market, but it isn't going to change any landscapes.

So this is where it gets interesting for me. Between the BMW MZ4 Coupe, and the Corvette C7 Grand Sport, I have a somewhat unique perspective on where I think the new C8 will ultimately land. If you take a look at Corvette in somewhat of a vacuum, they look fantastic, perform great on paper, and in real world testing they sure can't be beat. But my personal experience tells me otherwise, that despite the world beating performance, there are things that Chevrolet did to keep the cost low that makes it just shy of actually being a game changer and world beater.

First, there's the way it generates these insane test results. While it's not smoke and mirrors, they do it by benchmarking to a set of numbers rather than having a certain overall goal in mind. 0-60 in 2.9s? DCT, launch control, and insanely short 1-2-3 gear (in one of the promo videos they talked about how that sub 3 second is achieved because 3rd gear is engaged at the same time 2nd is. Which means you need to shift to 3rd to get to 60). What they don't tell you is that 4,5,6,7 and 8 all have to be geared super tall in order to retain some sort of civilized highway mileage, and that the transmission is going to force you to shift from 1-4th every time you're not above 3,000 RPM in first (it's call skip shift. Look it up). Or that number requires a ton of mass to be placed on the rear axle, hence the move to a mid engine rather than a front engine design, but that sacrifices a 50/50 weight ratio. Rumor again has it, that unlike other mid engine cars at the usual 40/60 split, the C8 is actually closer to the typical rear engine 911s at 30/70.

While this is all great for certain benchmarks, the car is built to meet and beat these benchmarks in mind, so from an overall package's perspective, other areas are compromised or more tech added to compensate. Notice the front tire to rear tire stagger is now 235/315? An 80mm stagger. Chassis is likely going to experience significant amount of understeer that they'll attempt to tune out using suspension trickery. End result is the car is likely going to be very fast, but just as Randy Pobst points out, even on the C7 platform the Corvette is excessively snap happy once all the traction aids are turned off, and on track it just doesn't feel connected to the driver like other top of the line chassis from Porsche, BMW, or the über exotics it claims to go up against.

Second, if you read the press and the reveal information right, the C8 is about 10% stiffer than the C7. By extrapolation that's about 17,000Nm/degree of deflection, which is about 1/2-2/3 of what your typical cars in this competitive range has. My MZ4 Coupe is 32,500Nm/degree of deflection, and when I drive it, you know it...It feels like it's carved out of a single block of forged aluminum. The Corvette, on the other hand, due to the longer wheelbase, wider, and heavier, flexes and moans into each and every turn like a convertible. Again, it's fast, don't get me wrong, and blindingly so, and enough so that you sort of overlook that particular flaw...But it just shows another area where GM must cut corners to offer this car at a price that they can compete at. $60K means no CF tub, no exotic braces and engineering that goes into making it super stiff to handle the rigors of high performance, no high-end material to ensure that they're not making a 3,600lbs behemoth and using a torque-y but low revving pushrod to overcome that mass disadvantage.

Which makes my third point. One of the reasons the C8 is so heavy compared to most of its competitors, which it is...At 3,600 lbs sans driver, it's in the M4 range and it doesn't even offer a back seat. It's because of the demographic demands. It's sold, still, primarily to OLD PEOPLE. Old people that doesn't want to have to climb over a huge threshold that keeps a chassis stiff. Old people that doesn't want a stiff ride as they cruise in their mid engine supercar on a Sunday afternoon. Old people that insist they must have trunk space to carry 2 sets of golf clubs as they trek on their retired asses to a golf course on a Tuesday afternoon. Old people that wants their friend in a Porsche to know that they can beat them on a stop light, but never actually do so. With that in mind, you can sort of understand why GM engineered the C8 the way they did.

Which is a good segue to why, despite it being an aspirational brand (yes Corvette is a brand. Try and find an exterior bow-tie logo on the car independent of the actual Corvette logo. You can't), the demographic continue to get older and older. That's right, a recent poll on Corvette Forum revealed that the AVERAGE owner's age for the latest generation, the C7, is approximately 68 years old. Sixty. Eight. Yes. Past retirement. For a large percentage of owners, this is going to be the last car they buy, and that presents a huge problem for Chevy as, while there are plenty of repeat buyers, most of these repeat buys are at the end of their purchasing life. So the move to mid engine really isn't about performance, in which case they would have found ways to make it lighter, coupled with a high revving V8, and gear set that don't lock you out of 2-3 gears to meet EPA mandates. No, the move to mid-engine is to save the Corvette brand, as they know they can no longer attract younger, affluent buyers without some fundamental changes, since the C7, despite its radical redesign for bother exterior and interior, and its supercar beating numbers, continue to only attract OLDER buyers (myself included. Midlife crisis hit me HARD).

So despite the talks of a game changer, I suspect, in reality the ONLY game it changes is the Corvette game. It's likely to attract younger buyers, thus extending the life of the Corvette brand so it doesn't suffer the same fate as Hardly Ableson. It's likely to convert a few fringe Porsche buyers, guys who must consider a C8 in conjunction with a 911/Cayman S/etc because they have to stretch to own a Porsche, but it isn't likely to convince the guys that must have a GT3 RS. It won't likely dent or impact Ferrari/Lambo/Mac sales, in fact, it won't likely kill the new NSX/Nissan GTR/Aston/Lotus etc, but it WILL kill the used car market for those supercars (for the same or lower price, better performance, and 3 years/50K mile warranty to boot, and less repair cost? No brainer).

But just like the original NSX before it? Sure, it made Lambo/Ferrari take notice, and the über cars of the day upped their game in performance and reliability and ownership experience. But that was likely to happen anyway, NSX or not. In 30 years, I doubt people would be lusting over the C8 like they would a Mark IV Supra or the original NSX because it would just be part of a line of Corvettes leading up to the C11.