C7 Corvette Stingray Gets its First Negative Review … Sort of

There’s always one right? That one person who regardless of what everyone else says, figures he’ll go against the grain.

Yup, and believe it or not, there’s one who even exists among all the journalists in the world who have weighed in on the award-winning 2014 Corvette Stingray. Wait, was that “award-winning”?  Oh yeah, award-winning, which is why it almost seems odd when you hear anyone say anything bad about the C7.

Clearly, Jethro Bovingdon, an auto writer based in Europe, seems to think the new Corvette might not deserve all the praise it’s getting based on his initial test drive of the car in the EVO magazine video posted below.

But to his credit, Bovingdon does start his review praising some features of the car in what he describes as “a big, big leap up from the C6.”

“The engine is absolutely brilliant, it’s so much sharper than before,” says the contributing editor to EVO. “It just revs like it’s properly angry. Sometimes these small block Chevy engines got big numbers, but they don’t quite translate to the road. But this one is proper. It’s ‘911-plus’ performance.”

The criticism starts kicking in at about the three-minute mark when Bovingdon says the Corvette doesn’t really feel like a sports car.

“The body control is not as good as something like an F-TYPE, and certainly not up there with a 911,” he said.

Bovingdon added, “Sometimes the chassis and the body are slightly out of sync with each other and it just takes away a little bit of the confidence of the car … through the steering and the balance, which is really, really good.”

He also had a fair amount of criticism about the brakes.

“They are very, very powerful. The ABS actuation is really nicely judged, but the pedal is so inconsistent,” said Bovindgon. “Sometimes it’s rock hard. Other times it’s really long and soft. And then the next time it will be somewhere in between. It’s a real shame that every time you get on them you really don’t know what to expect.”

Okay now, be easy on the Brit, guys.