THE ROAD & TRACK TEST


A FINE BALANCE

A SUMMER DAY IN THE NEW CORVETTE GRAND SPORT.
BY JASON H . HARPER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW TRAHAN

ONE PERFECT DAY IN A VETTE. It begins as a notion and turns into a mission. The brand-new 2017 Grand Sport is Chevy’s latest interpretation of the Corvette, and one is being shipped from Detroit to New York for R&T to test. And so an idea forms. A sunup-to-sundown romp at the onset of summer, in what is, potentially, America’s greatest modern sports car. A chance at the perfect driving day.

As a yellow Corvette Grand Sport with a seven-speed manual and the Z07 package is being loaded onto a big truck heading east, planning begins. The summer solstice is only a few days away, so it will be possible to spend 14 hours behind the wheel without ever snapping on a headlight. My local track in the Catskills, the Monticello Motor Club (MMC), is expecting me and the Grand Sport early in the morning. They promise as many unfettered laps on the 3.6-mile course as one could desire. From there I’ll head west, to the Delaware River and the border of Pennsylvania and then on to the Poconos and a suite of semisecret, Corvette-worthy roads in the wooded backcountry.

I’ll be limited only by the soft, slick rubber of the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2s and my own behind-the-wheel fortitude.

Planning perfection is pure folly. It’s spitting rain when I wake up; traffic over the George Washington Bridge is clogged, and I don’t dare keep up with the flow of 65-mph traffic on New Jersey’s 50-mph Palisades Parkway, a notorious speed trap. Which would you pull over, a dull-silver Corolla or a glintingyellow Corvette?

Then there’s the question of the Grand Sport itself. My hopes are high, as the GS is born from two cars we know and love, the C7 Stingray and the Z06. But it could prove less than the sum of its parts. Or, more pessimistically, it could be the worst kind of parts-bin car, without the anima of either parent or any personality of its own. The car is essentially a Z06 with a Stingray engine. Or, as a cynic might say, a Stingray with bolted-on Z06 parts.

My hopes are high, as the GS is born from two cars we know and love, the C7 Stingray and the Z06. But it could be the worst kind of parts-bin car, without the anima of either parent or any personality of its own.

The Grand Sport certainly looks like the Z06, with wider rear bodywork and a whole lot of venting. The optional stripes and fender hash marks are a nod to the 1963 Grand Sport race cars and the fourth-generation Corvette variant of the same name. The key elements to the car are on the underside. Suspension tuning mimics the Z06’s, but the Grand Sport gets its own springs, anti-roll bars, Magnetic Ride Control tuning, and electronically controlled rear differential programming. The LT1 6.2-liter V-8 is the same naturally breathing engine found in the regular car, with 460 hp and 465 lb-ft of torque. Essentially, the GS is designed to be meaner than the Stingray and leaner than the Z06.

“The cooling content is as uplevel as the supercharged Z06, which is pretty phenomenal for a naturally aspirated car,” says Alex MacDonald, the lead development engineer. “The Grand Sport cooling systems and brakes can handle heavy track duty. I promise you that your lap time will not be limited by the equipment.”

Corvette chief Tadge Juechter, who has been with General Motors since 1977 and worked on Corvettes since the C5, says he expects the Grand Sport to become the volume model. “The body, brakes, and tires were originally designed for the Z06, but they work astonishingly well for this car.” He laughs when asked if it took the engineers a long weekend to throw it all together. “Even though it looks like plug-and-play, you can’t just stick on the Z06 parts and call it a day. You have to do all the normal tuning of springs and bars and all the calibration work. The chassis control is custom, and the weight distribution is different, with less than 50 percent up front. You can take a bunch of great hardware, but unless it’s well integrated, the driving experience isn’t going to be great. We live and die by this stuff.”

The Grand Sport will start at $66,445 for the coupe and $70,445 for the convertible, a $5000 premium over the Stingray Z51. It will also be offered with the Z07 package, a $7995 option that nets the Cup 2 tires and carbon-ceramic brakes over the regular Brembos. The Stage 2 aero package is included, although the Stage 3 with the tallest rear wickerbill is not an option. According to Juechter, it would overslow the GS with its smaller output.

Still, says Juechter, “We’re not holding back on all of the aggressive stuff. This is pretty close to the last-gen ZR1.” Chevy claims the Grand Sport’s lap time at GM’s Milford Road Course outside Detroit is less than a second slower than the ZR1’s, and that on a racetrack the GS can hold up to 1.20 g’s of lateral grip in Z07 form. We measured 1.18 g on a 300-foot skidpad.

THE GRAND SPORT FEELS, WELL, FAMILIAR. The cockpit, with its short-throw manual, cares only for the driver, and the baritone V-8 sounds even better without the supercharger. I arrive at Monticello with muddy fenders, but the rain has stopped. Despite those slick Cup 2s, the Corvette is calm around wet corners. MMC is private and pristine, and the course includes a three-quarter-mile-long straight, a lovely uphill carousel, and several off-camber twists that can lure a less-capable chassis into calamity. As the pavement dries, I transition the Grand Sport from Sport to Track mode and then cycle through the subsets: Wet to Dry to Sport 1, Sport 2, and then Race. This tried-and-true system premiered on the Stingray, an example of the C7’s gimlet-eyed engineering. It gives you exactly what you ask, with more yaw and less interference with each rung up the ladder. Still, the interface is a pain: Twist the control to Track, double-click the button, then twist through the submenus. Juechter once told me they made it difficult on purpose so novices wouldn’t be tempted to get in over their heads.

I’ve driven both the C6 ZR1 and the current Z06 at MMC, and they were well suited to the fast straightaways and sweeping, momentum corners. But the tendency to power hard into corners was less ideal in the tighter, technical sections. The ZR1’s nose once got away from me on an off-camber righthander and I came close to having an unfortunate moment.

There is a lot of tire under the Grand Sport, and its widehipped stability allows for an easy 150-mph sprint down the straightaway before you clamp down hard on the carbon-ceramics. You get only the tiniest of wiggles from the rear under hard braking. The long straight is followed by a short, steep hill and one of the slowest corners on the track, one that speaks to the Grand Sport’s abilities. There’s a serpent-quick left-to-right turn on top of the crest, the curbs are tall and chassis-rattling, and the transition demands fast hands followed by a slow and conscientious unwinding of the wheel as you power out. It’s a kink that’s magic in a Miata but gives heavier cars conniptions. The Corvette goes from the Mr. T brutality of the high-speed straight to Fred Astaire flair with odd, almost unnerving ease. I exit the corner more quickly than in just about any car I’ve ever driven at MMC. I can feel seconds drop off every lap. I keep pushing but feel like the GS will continue extending the envelope. Crazy for a car that costs about $75,000.

The Grand Sport goes from the Mr. T brutality of the high-speed straight to Fred Astaire flair with odd, almost unnerving ease.

But, maybe, it is too easy?

Yes and no. It is easy to go fast, but not in the passive way a Nissan GT-R can feel out here. This is no video game. The GS is familiar and accessible in the right way, like listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony live. The tune is familiar and you already expect the grandeur of those sawing violins, but it’s still a surprise as you hear it unfold.

So, too, is the experience of rocketing around a track in the Corvette Grand Sport. It’s a grand culmination: The parts in the bin are working together beautifully. The modern Corvette represents many generations of engineering thoughtfulness at General Motors. The wonder that is the small-block V-8, of course, but also smaller innovations like magnetorheological dampers and a head-up display. All those engineers, working over all those years, waking up in the middle of the night with eureka moments. Forget all the awful nonbolstered seats and the gaps in the fiberglass bodies. What remains today is a car that’s shed the missteps but kept the good stuff. You can pummel around Monticello, downshifting perfectly, while the tires and chassis allow you to carry maximum rolling speed, and the headup display provides the information you need to shift at the proper rpm. The Grand Sport has the Stingray’s rev-matching paddles and the Z06’s Stage 2 aero package. (Which truly works on places like the uphill carousel. The faster you go, the better it sticks.) You can concentrate on only two things: the car and where you’re placing it.

I sidle back to the pits after a cool-down lap. A New Jersey– based Ferrari club has arrived, mostly driving California and FF models. The members are following the Grand Sport with their eyes. I kill the engine and they drift toward the Vette, as if pulled by a tide. They circle, getting closer, and I call them in.

“The car sounds amazing when you power down the straight,” says one. Another sticks his head inside and I invite him to sit shotgun. “Would it run with my California?” he asks. I just give him a look. “About half the price, too,” he murmurs. Less, I say. More like a third. Then he gives me a look. Sorry, man.

I COULD DO MORE LAPS. A lifetime of laps, actually. But a perfect driving day can’t just be one note. Besides, the open roads—or more likely the curving roads—of America are where the Grand Sport will live, the pride of thousands of people who save and save and then go for it. To them, I’d say: You probably don’t need the Z07 package. The stock Michelin Pilot Super Sports will last a lot longer than the optional Sport Cup 2s, and the claimed 1.05 g will still change your world. And if you’re going fast enough to feel the aero on a curve, you’re probably going fast enough to land in jail. The happiness of the Grand Sport is in the bang-it-turns suspension and the man-it-pulls engine. Four hundred and sixty horses are more than you’ll often use, and you can still touch 100 mph in third gear.

I know all this because I’ve left my house at 6 a.m. and by 3 p.m., I’ve barely exited the car. I feel like I’m only now getting to the best part—rolling through a series of my Greatest Hits. All the roads that make me happy, in one fell swoop, one after the other. (I’ve also filled the fuel tank twice and made lunch of gas-station ice-cream sandwiches.) There are the open sweepers that rise and fall over the hills and make the Corvette feel like a schooner in heavy Atlantic swells. And the miraculous pavement built high on the cliffs above the Delaware River. And a private hill climb that a friend dubs “G-Force Road.” I click off the traction control with a single stab of an index finger and choke the rear tires with smoke as the diff gamely locks and I grind up a perfect switchback.

The balance. The proportion of chassis to power. It’s those elements that you keep coming back to. Only a contrarian would term this Corvette underpowered, and the overengineered Z06 brakes and chassis allow supreme confidence on real roads, come what may, like the albino squirrel who darts out or the tree limb lying in your lane when you round a bend.

It’s my final Greatest Hits road, just before the gloaming. A 14-mile stretch of bending and elevation-changing asphalt between me and the place in the Poconos where I’ll finally rest my head. Fabulously devoid of traffic. A mist hangs just above the asphalt, shaded golden as the sun falls. I hold the car in third gear the entire way, settings in Sport, the V-8 pitched high and happy. Any worries I had of a Corvette without personality are gone. The Grand Sport is familiar but also revealing, given life and passion by professionals who love the tune just as much as we do.

The Grand Sport will give you a chance at the perfect driving day. Day after day after day.