Ha! I hope that "less-than-horrible" was tongue in cheek, because it sure made me laugh. :) In a recent review, you guys referred to the Accord coupe as "mileage champ" with a 17/25 EPA rating, while the Corvette is referred to as "less-than-horrible" with a 16/26 EPA rating. You're right that the tire budget is going to be a biggie! …
4 out of 5 seems to be a sweet spot for stock-level performance on the cars that we've been seeing lately. If there were no such thing as a Z06, this Corvette might have been a 5; there's nothing shabby about the way this new model performs. When we were rating the Corvette, we considered the car's performance focus more than outright measurements like quarter mile acceleration or slalom speed. As far as making improvements, there isn't one simple thing that I would change to suit me. Better tires wouldn't hurt, but won't even come close to closing the gap. HPDE or Autocross folks might tweak the shocks or anti-roll bars to suit their tastes, but there isn't anything on the car that screams for replacement. For a street car, I can't imagine many instances where I'd regret owning the base 'vette versus the Z06. On the other hand, if I wanted more performance from my base Corvette, you simply can't beat the mind-blowing Z06 without ruining the street manners (and warranty) of the base car.
I like your "Better than" / "But not as good as" comments for this car.
I just noticed that with the current GM Employee pricing, a base Coupe is now only $40k and that's with no haggle pricing. Wow, unbelievable bang for the buck!
Looking at the 2008 Corvette lineup, it can be easy to get awestruck by the 505 horsepower Z06 model. Although the bowtie-wearing supercar represents a bargain, truly frugal new car shoppers can find most of the Z06's performance at a $20,000 dollar discount in the C6 coupe, especially with the new LS3 engine.
The new LS3 is about one whole LS better than the LS2 that it replaces, mostly due to a bump in displacement from 6.0 to 6.2 liters. The increased displacement was achieved the old-fashioned way--by simply making bigger holes for the pistons to fill. As it turns out, this trick is as effective today as it has always been. The new Corvette's output is rated at a pavement-chunking 430 horsepower. You might want to stash some of the money saved for buying tires. Thanks to a supertall sixth gear, the Corvette manages to deliver all of this performance and still earn a less-than-horrible mpg rating of 26 miles on the highway.
While the engine in the Corvette is much improved, the same cannot be said for the touch surfaces. More S-10 than S-class, the whole of the cabin is a dead giveaway to the lowest-bidder roots of the interior components. Still, you would be hard pressed to find more performance for the money, even compared to the bigger-brother Z06.
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