The Straight Pipes’ Jakub Wrobel and Yuri Tereshyn, as well as Emelia Hartford, got to experience the quickest ‘Vette entitled to wear a license plate. All three are universally impressed by the way this car launches from a standstill, and even more so by how it feels to reach 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) in just 2.5 seconds from the passenger seat.
Even though it’s nigh-on impossible to hear the front-mounted electric motor doing its thing, a cool whining sound is played by the speakers. Emelia likens the sound to the insane-looking motorcycle from The Dark Knight. It’s eerily similar to the Batpod, and that makes the 2024 model year Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray so much cooler. Z06 cool? Not really, but it's pretty cool to see a hybrid take on Chevrolet’s long-lived small block.
The brake pedal feels pretty good according to Jakub and Yuri, or so they were told. First driving impressions are certain to paint a clearer picture of these finest of details. The Stingray and Z06 are both world-class sports cars according to the motoring authorities who drove them, including those peeps who aren’t afraid of criticizing the Detroit-based automaker.
Being a weird-yet-interesting combination of Stingray and Z06, the E-Ray will definitely receive a plethora of good press despite a number of C8-related issues that haven’t been addressed yet. Markups are still ridiculous, many dealers treat Corvette owners poorly, there are known quality issues, a handful of transmissions had to be replaced, and the list goes on and on.
Arguably the biggest issue with the C8 is production output. The midship ‘Vette started production nearly three years ago, and General Motors hasn’t adjusted the supply to the demand thus far. It’s even more infuriating for those peeps who are treated to a surprise markup right before taking delivery of their vehicles, a rather sour-tasting surprise given that many would-be owners waited a year or even years to take delivery.
$100,000 and change may be considered a lot for a General Motors product with a two-valve-per-cylinder V8 of the pushrod variety. The numbers that actually matter don’t lie, though. Chevrolet offers a supercar-beating sports car at a fraction of the supercar’s price. The E-Ray also comes with a heritage-related perk because the Corvette is celebrating 70 years of existence in 2023. Take that, Ferrari 296 GTB!
Essentially the successor of the seventh-generation Corvette Grand Sport, the eighth-generation Corvette E-Ray tops around 180 miles per hour (290 kilometers per hour). Both the Stingray and Z06 are quicker, but alas, they’re not as quick to 60 miles per hour. Even the quarter mile comes to a conclusion quicker in the E-Ray, as in 10.5 vs 10.6 seconds for the Z06.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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