Feisty C8 Chevy Corvettes Drag Tesla Model S, Guess Who Bites the Dust This Time!

Just recently, the Tesla Model Y was crowned the best-selling EV on the US market after the first six months of the year, with almost 200k delivered units under its belt. Then we also got the notice that its first half-year performance in Europe was enough to make it the best-selling car on the Old Continent, irrespective of powertrain!

That's pretty impressive, right? And it seems that legacy automakers do not have proper responses for the 'S3XY' model lineup – even Volvo's new and cheaper 2025 EX30 (it starts at $35k) is actually smaller than a Model Y by a margin and only comes stateside next summer! Anyway, that doesn't mean any Tesla is unbeatable – even the mighty 1,020 Plaid sometimes has its moments of uncertainty.

Alas, it's going to be hard to beat a Tesla on the street. So, how about the quarter-mile dragstrip? The videographer behind the Wheels channel on YouTube is a big fan of MRP and never misses a chance to show us the local brawls - especially the EV vs. sports car variety. For example, just recently, a Tesla Model S Plaid duked it out with a modded Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat in traditional 'close, but not close enough' combat.

Now the racetrack center known as 'Thunder by the River' - Mission Raceway Park (Mission, British Columbia, Canada) has used its NHRA-sanctioned dragstrip for a slightly tamer encounter between a black Tesla Model S and a couple of feisty C8 Chevy Corvettes. Presumably, the EV sedan wasn't of the Plaid variety, and the C8s were Stingrays, so they are a bit more on the same playing field.

The first encounter takes place between a black C8 and the dark Tesla, and all ICE-powered fans in general, plus the enthusiasts of mid-engined sports cars in particular, will be happy to find out the Chevy Corvette recouped the initial lost ground and wrapped the skirmish with a narrow victory: 11.72s versus 11.87s for the EV. Next up, from the one-minute mark, a flashier C8 dressed in Chalk Gray with aero goodies and lots of crimson details also came out for a brawl – and believe it or not, prevailed by quite a margin.

If you want to see a little more of the ritzy C8 that probably had an owner who wanted to stand out in any Corvette crowd, there is a third skirmish at the 1:47 mark against a blue Pontiac Trans Am. The Old versus New brawl easily shows the difference that a few decades of engineering bring to the table, hence the unceremonious 11.8s versus 14.4s defeat incurred by the vintage sports car!