My 2023 Corvette Stingray (C8) owners log and ongoing review.

Delivered on 3/30/2023

My last thread was about my C6 Z06 ownership experience and that car never visited a dealership, but this one I think is probably going to be different given as I bought it new. I still wanted to keep track of what happens to it here as I plan to autocross it and possibly do a track day here and there.

Initially, I didn't think I wanted to get the Stingray and only put myself on the wait list for the C8 Z06, but after looking at the progress of that list I realized it was going to take a while to get a Z06 and after hearing how good the Stingray is overall, I put myself on the Stingray wait list at MacMulkin Chevrolet back in August of 2022. I'm a couple of hours away from them and given they are the largest Corvette dealer in the country it seemed reasonable to buy from them, especially since they guaranteed MSRP at a time when dealers were marking the cars up a lot. I really enjoyed the buyer experience at MacMulkin, but I'll tell the story of that in a different post.

I'm still on the Z06 list at MacMulkin, but I got on the list at 1216 before production even started and I'm currently at 1097, so that list is moving a bit slower than the Stingray list.

By comparison I got on the Stingray list at 1011 in August of 2022 and got the car in March of this year.

Anyway, I put my C6 up for sale and a fellow came by and got it in February. I had advertised the car with a link to my GRM thread so the fellow that bought it created his own thread on here continuing its adventures.

Now the contrast between these two cars is notable. The C6 Z06 is a barely restrained beast of a car looking to be as light as possible and as powerful as possible without much regard to creature comforts (I still love that car). The C8 on the other hand is a fully realized dare I say supercar for regular car money.

The car is a 2LT with Z51 and Magnetic Ride Control. It's got Amplify Orange Tintcoat on the exterior with the black painted mirrors and spoiler and the composite side skirt covers (these can be removed, but I like the contrast). The interior is black and tan. I opted for the carbon fiber interior trim and the stealth interior trim package as I wanted the darker contrast with the tan and I think it looks really nice.

Initially I was thinking of getting the 3LT package for the C8 with the full leather interior, but a friend let me drive his C8 with 2LT and it was so damned nice inside that I decided I would just get that instead and forgo the extra few grand for the higher end interior. I'm really not disappointed at all with what I got. The efforts made to enhance textured faux leather have paid off I think. Everything feels very high quality in the interior. Light years beyond where the C6 was overall.

The seats are all power with lumbar and bolster adjustment, they are also heated and cooled and they actually hold you in place, imagine that. I considered getting the competition sport buckets, but decided they weren't really necessary and opted for the GT2 buckets and I'm happy with those. As it is the bolster on the GT2 seat bottoms is pretty decent. 

The car comes with a break in tune that limits torque and modifies shifting behavior to be less aggressive (it will upshift around 4000rpm unless you absolutely demand the power) for about 500 miles. I put 500 miles on the car in about two weeks and I must say that when 501 hit I had forgotten how much power these cars make. With 495hp and 470 lb/ft of torque this thing hauls ass just as much as my Z06 ever did. It also shifts like lightning. The Tremec 8 speed dual clutch transmission is really fast and in normal operation it's barely noticeable, but then when you give it the most aggressive setting it will bang off shifts even faster and aggressively downshift on deceleration.

Which brings me to another aspect of the car, how configurable it is. With the magnetic ride control you have the ability to firm up the shocks to the point where the ride over rough roads is just as brutal as my old Z06, but then at the touch of a button you can put it into the softest setting and take on New England roads no problem. The steering, brake feel, exhaust note and transmission shifting speed/aggression are all configurable.

The C8 almost feels like cheating after driving cars for years that had suspensions that would do great on race day, but were terrible on the roads around here. If I turn the drive option to the Touring mode the car cruises at 70 like it's my wife's BMW 3 series. I can only hear a little tire noise. Heck, even up to 100 it cruises like that, there is just a bit more wind noise. When I took the C6 Z06 to 100mph it was easy to do, but I KNEW I was going going 100. In this car, it can be very subtle about it, except that the HUD is staring you right in the face with the numbers.

The amenities in the car are generally what you would expect from a modern car I suppose, but I haven't had a modern car in a while so a lot of it feels pretty fancy to me. There is a charging slot in between the seat backs where you can put your phone to charge and the entertainment system has Android Auto and Apple Carplay, both of which work fine via Bluetooth. The car has options to turn on the heated seats and heated steering wheel automatically when it is cold out.

With regard to the steering wheel. I really like it. The shape feels right. The turn in on the car from the factory is quick and precise, very different than previous Corvettes which tend to be a bit lazy and require a lot of turning. I'm looking forward to doing slaloms in this car.

I'll have more later. There is a lot more to the car, but I wanted to start this off so I would not get too behind and stack up a really huge post.

outstanding, congrats!  looking forward to updates.

I really like the color. Actually I like everything about it :)

Great car!  Enjoy!  Great color too.  

Living 152 miles from Road America I feel I'd be obligated to only purchase this in the Elkhart Lake Blue Metallic color.

Congratulations!! I love that color, can't wait to see how you like it. 

The march of technology always amazes, even when we know it will amaze us.  Your C8 is your-now-my Z06's superior in every way.  And it should be!

I look forward to living vicariously through you and this thread.

I have just over 1K miles on my 3LT Z51 and I adore the thing. Nothing puts 500hp down as efficiently as this thing that I have ever driven. Still on the wait list for the Z06 myself and about 2 years out at what they are telling me but frankly after the last couple miles I don;t see the value there. 

a E-Ray would be nice though for the stealth mode in the HOA area's. 

I feel like the C8 is a giant step forward for the Corvette. Amazing machine, congrats!

Beautiful color! Congrats on the purchase!

Wait until you get it on track, they're beautiful to drive there.    Great car, congrats!

I'm up to about 1350 miles on the car. I'm intentionally driving it more than I might normally (poor me) as I need to get to 1500 miles before it's officially approved to do competition events per GM. I am definitely following this guideline since I do not want any warranty issues if something comes up.

I put a ceramic coating on it and here it is after a recent wash.

My only issue so far in owning the car is that the camera system would intermittently stop working. I ended up driving back up to Macmulkin on a Friday a couple of weeks ago and they replaced some of the modules that run the system (under warranty) and now it is functioning consistently again.

The camera system gives you a 360 view, front views and rear views out of the car on the main screen. The front view is soooo convenient, because you no longer have to guess where the nose of the car is when parking it. It literally shows you an overhead view of the nose of the car and out to about 3 feet in front of it. The rear view is absolutely necessary as you cannot see a darned thing out the back given that the engine is there and the window out the back is quite small. You also get the expected parking sensors to alert you when you are getting too close to something, but the camera system does a lot of the work to keep you from needing them. There is a button in the console that you can press to engage the camera system when moving forward at parking speeds and in reverse the camera system automatically displays the rear view. 

The normal rear view mirror is basically useless, but it also has its own camera view that you can flip over to. It took a little time to get used to the camera view vs a mirror, but I'm starting to appreciate it more. The rear view mirror camera seems to be on a separate system from the front and rear body cameras as it was completely unaffected by the issue I was having with those.

When the issue was occurring I would get in the car and start it up and put it in reverse and instead of the rear camera view I got a little camera icon with a red circle with a slash through it. No camera for you! The button to engage the system would do nothing. It was very odd. When this would happen the cameras would never work for the whole trip, but then I would stop somewhere and park and when I came back it would sometimes be working again on the next startup. Anyway, that never stopped happening so I took it in and got it fixed under warranty.

I took the long drive up to NH because I'm just not sure about having a local dealer work on this car yet since most haven't really seen many of them. That said, a friend has been taking his C8 to a local dealer and I might end up going to them for the typical services like oil change and trans fluid changes.

GM recommends for performance driving that you add more trans fluid to the system and apparently there is no necessity to take out said trans fluid. That will be the next agenda item to do since I'm almost to 1500 miles. 

I've obviously driven the car quite a bit at this point and I realized pretty quickly that I don't like driving an automatic Corvette all the time. At first I couldn't understand why I wasn't really enjoying driving the car and then I finally figured out it's because with the auto you don't get to feel that well of torque in each gear as much in normal driving. In normal driving it will upshift pretty early for fuel economy since even getting up to highway speed doesn't tax the car much. Then if you demand power it will obviously downshift and don't get me wrong, this transmission is fast as hell and gets you going quickly when needed, but even as good as it is, you're still dealing with the pedal as the input and if you put the accelerator near to the floor it thinks you want to go to the lowest possible gear and get the maximum power, when in reality sometimes I just want to stick in the current gear and let the motor work its way up through that linear torque band.

That said, the automatic is fantastic in traffic or around town, so luckily this car has the best of both worlds, because you can press the M button in the shifter console and have full manual control of the transmission when you want and then with a press of a button just go back to automatic. The paddles are nicely placed for manual shifting and the thing shifts like lightning. You can go from 8th down to 5th as fast as you can press the paddles.

I'm not saying I won't use the auto in performance driving, because it does shift faster than I ever could and in track mode it will hold gears and it upshifts and downshifts very aggressively, but there is just this middle ground for street driving where I like to manage the gears and play. I'll have to see though once I get it on course how well it works.

On the performance side GM has a track preparation document that even gives alignment specs and tire pressure recommendations. I'm honestly wondering if the local Chevy dealer is going to be able to align the car to that spec since it has 3 degrees of negative camber up front.

For autocross I know I don't need to install the brake ducting or high performance brake fluid that they recommend for track as brakes are not really an issue in autocross. 

They say the 0w40 oil the car normally uses is good for track use, but then they also say you can use 15w50 oil on track, but that you should swap it back to 0w40 afterward. This makes me nervous. I don't like having a choice like this. Why say you can use 15w50 or 0w40 without any context? When would I want to use 15w50? No mention of that in the document.

I'm thinking for a shakedown I'll just drive it at autocross with the street alignment and the stock tires to see how it feels before I start investing in wheels and tires and giving it the full competition alignment. I'm not really sure what I can fit on the car either for wheels that will get me into competition street tires for autocross. The stock setup is 245/35-19 fronts and 305/30-20 rears and there is nothing autocross tire related that will fit on that.

wearymicrobe said:

I have just over 1K miles on my 3LT Z51 and I adore the thing. Nothing puts 500hp down as efficiently as this thing that I have ever driven. Still on the wait list for the Z06 myself and about 2 years out at what they are telling me but frankly after the last couple miles I don;t see the value there. 

 

a E-Ray would be nice though for the stealth mode in the HOA area's. 

Even though I'm still on the Z06 list, I'm also skeptical that I want to pay the premium to get the Z06, because this car is already that good. Even avoiding the carbon fiber rims and the more expensive exposed carbon fiber pieces my preferred configuration comes in around $150k. Considering I got the Stingray for a shade under $90k that's quite a premium. I suppose I could give up the Z07 package, but honestly I've seen a half dozen of them in person without the Z07 package and the car does not stand out that much without it and I'll admit, at this point if I'm buying it I want it to look the part and I want that extra performance.

I know I only paid 78K for my 3LT Z51, I also have the 100k warranty on the drivetrain, the Z07 is the only one I would order and its a lot of money for not a lot of bang. .  

I have ordered the blackheart exhaust already and I am going to supercharge it eventually if I keep the car. Wheels are next I think some gold Volk TE37 FE's in the stock sizing. Or I will send out the factory wheels for powder coating. I also need different brake pads for the street, the Z51 pads squeal like a pig until they are warm and on the street I do not drive hard enough to warrant the pad/disk wear of semi metallics. I cn switch back easy enough for track/training days.  

I want and Z07 I don't need one. Its hard to see the value for the Z06 because at 150K because I am not going to track it, I have been down that road and I will not commit to a corner hard enough to need the car  due to the cost. Plus I am not willing to cage another 100K car and make it unusable on the street to make it safe to do so. I can keep the Porsche around for track work and if I put that into the gravel its no big deal.  

Transmission Fill

GM wants you to get to 1500 miles and then add another two quarts of fluid to the transmission before doing any performance driving. I passed the 1500 mile mark last month and so I brought the car to the dealer to get the transmission fill done and I also had the first oil change done.

The fill cost me around $400. The fluid costs $43 a quart so most of this charge is labor. The fill plug is located right below the rear axle and requires some doing to get to. I do have a lift, but given that this car is under warranty and the transmission is very expensive, I am not doing anything myself at the moment.

There is no requirement to later remove the extra fluid, but there are a few reasons why they don't add it from the factory including cost and necessity since most people won't do performance driving with the car and the lower fluid level apparently gives a minor fuel efficiency bump.

After 24 hours of track driving you're supposed to change the trans fluid and filter. I'm not sure what sort of timeline there should be for autocrossing, but I will likely be very conservative in this regard and discuss with the dealer I purchased from.

Autocross Site 

Speaking of autocross, this past weekend we were able to run our local autocross at the site we have used for many years. The site is the Army Engine Plant in Stratford, CT. They have been trying to clean up the site for decades so they can redevelop it, but the amount of waste that was dumped on the site and into the water adjacent to the site has made things expensive and complex. They did some cleanup along the shoreline last year that had us unable to use the lot. They had to remove tons of material from the coastal sea floor and the lot was taken up by equipment being used for this process, but at this point that phase is done so we got back to using the lot. The lot is quite old and tends to throw up a lot of debris, so it's not ideal, but it's still a good size and provides some fun driving.

Performance Data Recorder

In preparation for this I purchased a 512gb SD card to use for the performance data recorder (PDR) the car comes with. The 512gb card is a Sandisk that cost me $80 and this gives me 1000 hours of recording time. There is an option to turn on the PDR whenever the car is run so it essentially acts as a dash cam. I decided to enable this just in case I get into some sort of accident and need evidence of malfeasance. You can tell it to overwrite the oldest files when you reach the maximum capacity on the memory card.

The PDR has an option to auto map a course for lap timing. It will do it for both a track (same start/finish) or autocross (different start/finish). You have to put the car at the start of the course, set the start point and drive the course until the end and set the finish point. This didn't work well for me, because I'm an idiot and for some reason thought I could just set the start at the staging line and then run the course and punch the button at the finish, but I needed to set the start at the actual start line, because of course as soon as I hit the staging line the lap timer thought I was starting the lap. I'm not sure how I will negotiate doing this process at a normal autocross as most will not let you drive the course prior to starting the event. I could have done it for our local, but of course I'm a dummy and messed it up. I still got recordings of the laps, but the timing in the video has no meaning at all. Obviously I have times from the actual event timer so it's not a big deal. I'll try to pull some video later.

I blame my stupidity on being distracted by driving this thing for the first time in anger.

Autocrossing The C8

I did no preparation of the car. It was on the factory alignment and the factory tires (Michelin Pilot Sport 4S runflats).

I thought about what I wanted to use for settings and ended up setting everything except the steering feel to the maximum using Z mode. Steering feel I left in the middle as there is a lot of turning at our local lot due to the size. The car has five different Performance Traction Management (PTM) modes you can use.

Wet, Dry, Sport, Race 1, Race 2

Description of these modes from the owners manual.

Performance Traction – Wet . Intended for all driver skill levels . Wet or damp conditions only — not intended for use in heavy rain or standing water . StabiliTrak/ESC is on and engine power is reduced based on conditions

Performance Traction – Dry . For use by less experienced drivers or while learning a new track . Dry conditions only . StabiliTrak/ESC is on and engine power is slightly reduced

Performance Traction – Sport . For use by drivers who are familiar with the track . Dry conditions only . Requires more driving skill than Performance Traction – Dry . StabiliTrak/ESC is on and more engine power is available than in Performance Traction – Dry

Performance Traction – Race 1 . For use by drivers who are familiar with the track . Dry conditions only . Requires more driving skill than Performance Traction – Dry or Performance Traction – Sport . StabiliTrak/ESC is off and available engine power is the same as Performance Traction – Sport

Performance Traction – Race 2 . For use by experienced drivers who are familiar with the track . Dry conditions only . Requires more driving skill than in other modes . StabiliTrak/ESC is off and engine power is available for maximum cornering speed

I set the PTM to Race 2 as I'm very familiar with the lot conditions and I've got a lot of autocross experience and figured if something happened I could correct. Plus, I figured if anything the car would understeer at the limit with the stock configuration.

Once I had everything configured for Z mode all I needed to do was press the Z button twice on the steering wheel and it would engage my custom mode and enable the PTM mode of choice.

I started off the second heat. The car's launch control works well. This thing makes my head fly back it has so much power off the line and the noise it makes was impressive from my POV and according to all the bystanders. I found the car incredibly easy to drive. I left the transmission in full automatic in the most aggressive setting and the only time I noticed it shifting was when it would downshift and I could hear it rev match. It just found the right gear and gave me power whenever I needed it. The car feels small out on course, very agile.

I ended up getting raw FTD and PAX FTD. The closest in raw time was a friend of mine that runs an FB RX-7 on Hoosiers. I got him by a little less than a tenth of a second, but I did cone away a faster time. PAX I was ahead of the next fellow by .716.

The car does understeer at the limit, but it's still better than a prepped AS C6 Z06 in that regard. By all accounts a performance alignment to add some camber all around will make it a much looser car and of course at that point I'll put it on the Yoko A052s.

I'm very impressed with the car out of the box. It's really good.

New Wheels

I decided for autocross I would buy another set of wheels and I found a guy on Craiglist selling a set of the silver C8 stock rims for $700 about 20 minutes from me. People are practically giving away the stock rims for this car. I met up with him and according to him he took the rims off at 200 miles and never used them after that. The condition bears that out. I got the rims, lugs and center caps all in like new condition. Now I just have to get the tires and TPMS.

In reply to Harvey :

Congratulations on the car. Our family visited the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green last year and I continue to want one.  

I note you are a fellow Connecticut resident;  Executive Chevrolet in Wallingford is really excellent and I would not be afraid to service the car with them.  I also feel the same about Richard Chevrolet in Cheshire.

Since I follow the FCSCC on Facebook I saw their post about running in Stratford.  My Mustang is with the mechanic getting some upgrades or I likely would have been there too. 

Perhaps I'll see you at a future event.  All the best with the car-it really is a stunner.

At some point I will look into using a local dealer. My friend has a 2023 Vette that he is getting serviced in Danbury.

Come on out. We have a few more FCSCC events scheduled. Check our website https://www.fcscc.com/yearly-schedule/

How in convenient would it be to drive in manual mode with the shift buttons to keep it in the gear you want while accelerating?  It should be easy to toggle between full auto and manual shift and then back again to cruise.

May I say this color combo is just one step down from my all time favorite on these......70th anniversary edition. the orange really works on this not to mention the interior colors.......well done. pssst cannot stand the blue C8 at all.

akylekoz said:

How in convenient would it be to drive in manual mode with the shift buttons to keep it in the gear you want while accelerating?  It should be easy to toggle between full auto and manual shift and then back again to cruise.

It is easy, it's one button below the shifter area. You can go to full manual control in any drive mode and use the paddles for manual control.

759NRNG said:

May I say this color combo is just one step down from my all time favorite on these......70th anniversary edition. the orange really works on this not to mention the interior colors.......well done. pssst cannot stand the blue C8 at all.

You'll like these pics I took of a 70th Anniversary Z06

Update. This is the best car I've ever owned. Driving on the street or at the limit it's fantastic.

I've been autocrossing at our local in Stratford on the stock tires.

FCSCC is the local by the way, come out and drive with us if you are in the area.

Motorsportreg link.

FCSCC website

I decided I needed to get some autocross tires, because the stockers are full tread Michelins and I just don't want to completely blast them doing autocross.

I picked up some silver colored stock rims for $700 from a local guy that had sold his car with aftermarket rims on it. Little dirty with brake dust here, but you get the idea.

Then, I picked up some Yokohama A052s to mount on those rims. Problem is that I could not get the stock sizes so I ended up getting 235/40-19 fronts and 295/30-20 rears. The stock tires are 245/35-19 and 305/30-20. A little less width all around and a little more height up front, but they fit.

That said, the Yokos have huge shoulders and are not much different in width than the stock Michelins.

These are the fronts 245 Michelin on the left, 235 Yoko on the right.

Here are the rears. 305 Michelin on the left, 295 Yoko on the right.

Not a huge difference overall, but there is a huge difference in grip and handling at autocross. I wanted to get the track alignment before I went last weekend to FCSCC, but I couldn't make that happen, so I drove on the stock alignment with the Yoks.

A fellow showed up in a new Porsche GT4 RS on Hoosiers.

I ended up .3 back from him on PAX, me running SS and him running SSP. He was first I was second overall on PAX. I was about 1.6 seconds behind on raw time.

I'm going to NNJR at Metlife this weekend and I got the alignment done by my local shop and I'm excited to see how the car runs with more camber.

Turns out the GM performance alignment specs are in their alignment machine's computer as one of the alternate configurations for the car so it wasn't even technically a custom alignment. I think this means you can bring your C8 Corvette to any alignment shop with a modern machine and they will be able to do the track alignment.

Per the GM instructions you do need to remove the spacers behind the upper control arm to get the camber they specify (-3.0 front and -2.5 rear). This is basically the same sort of setup they have on the previous generation cars. I had to do this with my C6 Z06 when I got all the camber put on. 

I had the shop do the spacer removal for me, cost a bit more obviously because of that. I'm thinking I won't put the spacers back in when I set the car back to a street alignment. This will mean I will likely need to run more camber than the stock alignment as there is only about -0.5 degrees of camber stock, but my alignment guy is pretty sure it can get back to around -1 or -0.9 without putting the spacers back on and that should be fine for street driving.

$700 seems like an absolute steal for those wheels!

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

$700 seems like an absolute steal for those wheels!

I was kind of surprised, but the stock wheels go dirt cheap on the aftermarket.

These are basically the same as the ones I got on the car except mine are black with the machined lip.

I went to NNJR at Metlife Stadium and tried it out there. Came in 53nd in PAX out of 110 people. Not my best day out. I was definitely out of practice with how fast the courses run at NNJR and this was a very fast course. I would say the slalom was at least a 60mph slalom and I struggled to get it right. I coned away my best run which would have had me 3rd in SS, but still pretty far back from the leaders.

I went out to our local FCSCC autocross yesterday, which is a much smaller lot and took top PAX and top raw time out of 39 people. I realized after taking a few runs this time that the R2 PTM setting is still intervening quite a bit. For some reason I thought that was the fully disabled setting, but then figured out during a fun run that you disable everything by just going to Z  (or Track) mode with PTM disabled and then holding down the traction control button for five seconds. This ends up giving you fully disabled traction control and fully disabled ESC. I think this would have helped me out a lot at NNJR. As it is, I managed to get top time at FCSCC using the R2 PTM setting, but I think on the larger faster course having everything disabled will be better and I will likely use this same disabled setup at FCSCC in the future.

The car handles really well with the added camber, zero understeer issues. It's way better than anything you could achieve with the C6 Z06 out of the box.

Still the best car I've ever owned. The weather got nice for a bit a week ago and I took the car out after a long spell of winter rest and it garnered compliments wherever I went.

It's a little distracting at times, because people will honk at me as a sign of approval if they are coming the opposite direction.

Second oil change coming up soon, but otherwise no drama.