Stingray... the coolest named car in history

Chevy drags its tyre-smoking, bone-shaking Stingray into the 21st century, but has it got what it takes to compete with Europe’s finest?

Nifty little red Corvette

You look wonky so I’ve booked you a massage,’ my wife announced this week. And apparently not only do I look wonky, I feel wonky, too. ‘Your whole right side is like concrete and the back of your neck – urgh.’ As usual, she was spot on. The masseur told me I am particularly right-sided but not to beat myself up about it, as it wasn’t my fault, it was God’s or the Big Bang’s or however it was we came to be.

‘Should I try to do more things left-sided then?’ I enquired. ‘Absolutely,’ came the reply. Thanks, therefore, to Chevrolet for this week sending me a leftie, full-on (untensed) muscle car to help redress my balance for a week and facilitate much-needed right-side relaxation.

‘It’s better to burn out than to fade away,’ Neil Young once sang. Well here’s your ticket to that party, with over 600 newton metres of torque poised and ready to rock. Schhhhmokin’ is what you’ll be. In fact, the only chance you’ll have of remaining in this century is maybe by leaving the driving mode on E when she starts up, which apparently stands for Eco… yeah, right.

I will be amazed if anyone remotely involved in this car spent a minute thinking about anything other than how to make her more of a monster than she already was at birth. Sport or Track mode are the only two settings that matter.

From a tame purr to a roar, from the murmurs of expectation to the reality of sitting in the middle of a mobile earthquake, this ’ray really does have a potent sting in its tail.

I especially love the way the Chevy designers have encapsulated the Sixties and Seventies musclecar boulevard cruiser vibe, not just with the renaissance of the Stingray itself (by the way, is there a cooler name for a car?), but even allowing for the presence of a modern V8 under the hood. She hasn’t lost a shred of whatever alchemy it is that creates such a huge burble, from an equally huge 6.2-litre block. Not that she isn’t capable of more.

‘The one we sent you is standard,’ said the man from Chevy. ‘It hasn’t even got a blower.’ Does she honestly need one? The turbo version C7 ramps up power to over 600bhp, and seeing as I’d already resurfaced the street with rubber from all that rear-wheel drive five times in the first hour, without the help of a suck-and-blow magician’s top hat, I really wouldn’t bother.

She really is quite the bruiser when she wants to be, but with surprising balance and finesse. Not prima ballerina-like finesse, you understand, but more enchanting JCB dancing diggers kind of finesse in a gentle giant kind of way. She does feel raw, though – from the moment you press the start button she’s like a really grumpy rhinoceros suffering from a touch of bronchitis, reluctant to clear its throat.

There’s a moment before the engine starts when you wonder if she’s actually going to fire up at all – the starter motor struggles to heave that huge lump of an engine over a single revolution. Once turning, though, it’s the ponderous, unstable rhythm that hits you next, coursing through the chassis from front to back like a shot of absinthe, from your gullet to your pelvis.

The transmission is no rose garden either. Ker-clunk! Get in there for heaven’s sake, you pesky gear shift. The word is that the C7 team had deliberated about bringing the car kicking and screaming into the 21st century by fitting paddle-shift gears but ‘chose’ not to. Really? Especially hard to believe when you see the paddles there in front of you either side of the steering wheel, now alternatively employed to activate a feature called Rev Match!

This is to help avoid engine- braking on the change down. The device registers the last rev count before you moved the gear stick, then matches the revs you need to retain your current speed in the next consecutive lower gear.

Anice try, and it does work rather well and sound rather good, but still, I can’t help feeling that’s not what these paddles were intended for. The rest of the car, however, does feel up to date and the steering is surprisingly precise – easy enough to keep that potentially wild derriere in check, sort of. And I suppose that’s the thing: she’s not all tear up and scare the lollipop ladies. If

you do bother to pop her into Eco mode, the engine cleverly cuts four cylinders, converting your big V8 into a modest and impeccably behaved four-banger, bringing consumption up to around 30mpg.

Cockpit next then and breathe in as Corvettes are renowned for being a little on the cramped side. I did feel squeezed, my elbows and knees always touching something whether I wanted them to or not. The wrap-around driver style more vac-pac than boil in the bag, my right elbow with nowhere to go when the gear stick was back in second, fourth or sixth.

The interior pretty much makes sense and is a more than halfdecent combination of Alcantara, leather and carbon fibre. Not Ferrari, Lambo or Aston decent, you understand, but then again this car is less than a third of the cost of a new one of those. But then there’s the blue plastic sunroof, which my son renamed the spring roof. Not quite summery enough with its cheap-looking tint but better than no skyward view at all. When I

I RESURFACED THE STREET WITH RUBBER FIVE TIMES IN THE FIRST HOUR

told him it is removable, however, he elevated his verdict to ‘cooool’.

The Corvette is undeniable value for money when you experience the drive and see how well she compares to the aforementioned, so-called blue chip marques. However, when it comes to depreciation, I suspect the Corvette is second only to Hawaii when it comes to cliff diving.

That said, Chevrolet says it will produce limited numbers in Britain (perhaps as few as 30), so rarity may sustain the market. It’s a nice idea but don’t hold your breath. Yet, despite misgivings, I couldn’t help liking the C7. She just spoke to me somehow. Or perhaps she was softly singing in my ear. ‘You can have as many burnouts as you like and still not fade away – if you happen to own a Corvette.’