REVIEW 2015 Corvette Stingray Convertible
There I was, on the road to Dallas for the Texas State Fair in a 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible. I had the top down, my seat cooler on, and rock music coming out of the Bose stereo…and I was pissed off.
The GPS system refused to guide me. It took my destination and knew where I was, but kept wanting to send me on roads that weren’t around me. I lost all confidence in its abilities and felt like a boob using my stand-alone Garmin unit. However, it didn’t take me long to calm down and start enjoying my surroundings.
I was in a brand new Corvette, after all – and a loaded one. My tester was equipped with the $4,160 2LT package, which included luxuries such as heated and cooled seats, XM satellite radio, and a color head-up display. It also had the ZF1 Appearance Package ($1,995), Performance Data Recorder ($1,795), and carbon fiber interior accents ($995), among other niceties. Grand total? $71,255.
Another line item on my Shark Gray Metallic car’s sticker was the $1,195 multi-mode performance exhaust system, which bumped the horsepower up to 460 and the torque up to 465 pound-feet. Its Stealth setting helped me avoid being “that guy” when driving through my neighborhood late at night.
The sounds coming out of the rear pipes got a little louder when I selected Touring mode. Switching to Sport or Track was – in the best way – like cracking open a door that was holding back a growling bear. Flooring it while in either one of those last two configurations made me think a volcano was erupting right behind me. Despite such sonic fury, the exhaust never droned. It would shut up at the right moment: the one just before it became a nuisance.
That hardware was connected to the newest version of the LT1 engine. I often found myself comparing the power delivery of the 6.2-liter V8 to that of the twin-turbo 3.6-liter V6 in the Cadillac CTS V sport because those are the two most powerful GM motors I’ve ever opened up. The latter power plant delivered its 420 hp so smoothly that I occasionally didn’t realize I was breaking the speed limit.
The Corvette’s eight-banger was rougher and more physically engaging. Chevy’s engineers could have refined all of the crude charm out of it, but they didn’t. Consider me grateful. The idle was lumpy and coarse, and reminded me that I was in an American performance machine.
If the blown six was an IV of syrup, the big eight was rock candy. Putting the pedal down in the Vsport was drama-free. Doing the same in the Corvette was scary, as if I were on the back of grizzly that was poked with a stick. I had to hold on as the beast charged forward and bellowed with rage.
It sure kept its footing when it needed to, though. The steering refused to be bossed around, even on pockmarked, curving roads. The Touring setting on the suspension did a fine job of soaking up irregularities in the pavement. As you can imagine, the Sport and Track modes were firmer. They were never punishingly stiff, though. On the other hand, the bolsters of the leather-and-sueded-microfiber GT seats were – at first. I certainly wasn’t going to stop eating carbs, so I had to press back into them for a while before they conformed to my shape and gripped me.
I needed them to when I decided to light up the rear run-flats. Even with the traction control on, I was able to break the rear end loose when pulling out onto the street from a business driveway. I didn’t have to stomp on the gas, either. All I needed was a few millimeters of extra throttle to kick the ass out. A split second later, the back rubber would hook up and a friend and I would be flying down the road, satisfied by our taste of fishtail.
The eight-speed automatic was just as pleasing. Throughout the course of 600 or 700 miles, it never bungled a gear change or hiccuped. It smoothly shifted exactly when I wanted it to shift. Pulling back on the right steering wheel-mounted paddle elicited a nearly immediate response. The 8L90 would jump down multiple gears in an instant when it knew I wanted to go from cop-friendly to warp speed.
If I was using the manual function and not in first when approaching a red light, the gearbox would automatically put me there. Not only was it forgiving, it was efficient. With cruise control engaged while on I-35 on the way up to Dallas, I saw the average fuel economy read-out display a nice, round 30. I hit the low 20s after a few days of mixed driving in Austin. The EPA officially rated the 2015 Stingray convertible at 16 city, 29 highway, and 20 combined mpg.
Wherever I happened to be, I preferred to have the power top down – for more than just the obvious reasons. Getting it that way only took 21 seconds and the push of a button. I loved feeling the cool evening breeze on my face as I blew past other cars on the freeway. I also enjoyed not having to worry about the blind spots the erected lid created. The high-mounted mail slot of a rear window became a non-issue. Although the rag top kept out more noise while it was up than it did while it was stowed away, it barely muffled the roars of semis accelerating next to me on the interstate.
Speaking of accelerating, I just had to test out the Performance Data Recorder. All I needed to do was pop an SD card into a slot in the glove compartment, tell the PDR to start recording, and drive. Unfortunately, I chose the Sport graphic overlay, which displayed my speed, for my evaluation. That footage will stay on my computer…
At the end of a week with the 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible I was, once again, pissed off…and sad. My time with it was over.
via [Chevrolet]
