Flying the new 'vette
Can a $50,000 car&emdash;made by GM no less&emdash;compete with
an airplane?
It was just as the speedometer inched its way past the 300 km/h
mark that the thought crossed my mind: maybe I should be slowing down
a bit.
At which time another thought inevitably arose. What, exactly, did
slowing down "a bit" actually mean? Even dropping 50 km/h in the next
few seconds would still have me travelling about twice as fast as
anybody else I was likely to encounter heading down the road, and
slowing down to a normal speed of 120 or so would have taken a
while&emdash;not to mention an amount of willpower that, at the time,
I didn't possess.
I recited it aloud. "Three. Hundred. Kilometers. An. Hour." The
mind boggled. Flashback to my Science of Flight class in first year.
That's faster than the Cessna we flew. Plus, no filing a flight plan,
no communication with the tower, no lining up for runways, and no
circling overhead.
Thank god there weren't any cars around. The last one I had seen
was almost five minutes, and by now, twenty-five kilometers behind
me; the look on the Tempo driver's face as I passed him at 250 had to
be seen to be believed, and describing it just wouldn't do it
justice. I could only see open road ahead, and at that time of the
day, it was unlikely that I would come across any cops. Had I done
so, the question of what they would have done with my sorry ass would
be very much up in the air.
But back to the car. While the speedo was undoubtedly
exaggerating&emdash;track tests have shown that the new Corvette's
top speed is in the 172mph range, and not the 185 that 300 km/h
translates to, it's still the fastest I've ever driven a car, and I
hadn't yet broken a sweat. The C5 is as stable at insane autobahn
speeds as any working-class car is at sixty. Or fifty. Forty?
That the C5 goes fast is no surprise. Save for the first couple of
years of production where 'vettes were powered by 6-cylinder engines
hooked to two-speed automatics, they have always been supercar-fast.
And they all, like the C5 I was rocketing down the highway on the way
home from Ottawa, had offered this supercar performance at reasonable
prices.
What came as a distinct surprise was how buttoned-down the car
felt, at this and any other speed. My experience with GM cars having
been limited to Safari vans, Olds Cieras, and Luminas, I was
expecting to be underwhelmed by the car's structure and build
quality.
Even first-hand accounts from friends and fellow journalists who
had driven the previous-generation C4 (1984&endash;96) had me
prepared for a jarring ride, a litany of miscellaneous squeaks and
rattles, water leakage through the targa top, and vertical shimmies
over harsh bumps. They were unanimous both in their praise and
condemnation. The C4, they said, was a great car for the
racetrack&emdash;forgiving at high speeds, with neutral handling and
plenty of power&emdash;but you wouldn't want one as a daily driver.
It would drive you nuts.
Not so this red C5. One of the first off the line, and thus not up
to the same tolerances that later models will undoubtedly be produced
to, it felt billet-strong, and&emdash;gasp&emdash;its body panels,
interior trim pieces, everything, fit together right. The gaps
between the outside fiberglass pieces are Mercedes-tight, and are
rabbetted so that they look even smaller (rabbets are L-shaped
indentations that let two panels overlap, letting body color show
through gaps rather than leaving the impression of a black hole.) All
of the exterior trim pieces, from the lights up front to the vents
carved into the bottom of the great-wall-like rear bumper are
near-perfect in their execution and alignment. The paint finish has
improved, too. There's none of the orangepeeling and blotchiness that
plagued the C4 throughout its life.
Same story inside. The plastics are of a much higher quality than
I've come to expect from American companies, and while the fit and
finish could be better, it's Honda good, with tight panel alignment
and no exposed screws. The only nit-picky details: a passenger-side
grab handle that sprouts from the dash like the one in the Chevy
Astro, leather seats that don't quite cover up their
metal-and-plastic frames and the flimsy center-console armrest.
The seats are big crinkly-leather buckets, designed for frames a
lot bigger than mine, but they're adjustable every which way, and
once I pinched in the side bolsters as far as they would go, I was
comfortable&emdash;more comfortable than I had ever been in an
American car.
Stick the ignition in the dash&emdash;where it should be, not on
the steering column&emdash;and turn the key. The needles swing
full-circle, and return to their zero positions, in a dance of
electronic trickery that handily outdoes even a Lexus. The dials
themselves are of the same elctroluminescent type used by the
Japanese luxury cars, but they have an interesting 3-D effect that
the Lexus lacks. Underneath the instrument pod is a small one-line,
multilingual display panel that combines most engine-management
functions in an easy-to-read lighted display; pressing a button
cycles you between English, French, German and Spanish. Cool, but it
seems a little bit kitschy when you start the car up and "Corvette by
Chevrolet" scrolls across it.
Turning the key, of course, also brings the engine to life. It's
quiet at idle&emdash;quite a bit more silent than the basso profundo
rumble of the old Corvette. There's no noticeable vibration
throughout the car, save for the quivering of the 6-speed's lever.
Slipping into first and driving through traffic is as easy as with
any economy car. The Corvette handles its considerable bulk well, and
is easy to squirt through traffic. The steering is light at low
speeds, making the car feel a lot smaller than it is in the city. The
only indication that you're not driving an efficient Japanese machine
is the fact that 60 km/h is in the middle of second gear instead of
fourth; in the cut-and-thrust of urban driving, you rarely get beyond
third. Always lurking just behind the firewall, though, is the deep
V-8 rumble, though it's more of a purr at slow speeds.
See an opening in the gridlock? Point the nose, drop down a gear,
and you're there. Instantly. The pushrod LS1's enormous torque
(almost 400 lbs-ft, and most of it available from 1000 rpm on up)
makes quick work of any stretch of road. The acceleration is simply
stupendous. While we can pooh-pooh GM's decision to forego overhead
cams, it's hard to fault this car's engine, whose response is
instantaneous and which doesn't need to be revved to produce its
power. Though revving it is a pleasure&emdash;as the engine pulls up
towards its 6000-rpm redline, it roars like a caged animal that's
just been released, and there's none of the sense that the engine's
producing more noise than power as in other big V-8s.
Pull into the space, and tap the drilled-aluminum brake pedal. The
four-channel ABS-controlled vented discs haul the car back down to
speed without any drama, and no fade. The ABS only kicks in under the
most ham-handed efforts, and when it does, it's largely unobtrusive.
(The brakes themselves are a sight, too: enormous four-pot calipers
with "Corvette" engraved into them, wrapped around a set of gleaming
discs, the front and rear sets of which are an inch larger in
diameter than their forbears.)
The brakes are attached to Goodyear Eagle F1 tires, which were
developed specifically for Corvette. The tires are 10mm narrower all
around, but the rears are now eighteen inches in diameter instead of
seventeen. Grip, Chevrolet claims, is actually up because of the
eighteens' larger contact patch compared to last year's car, with the
added benefit of a more compliant ride from the narrower tires.
Whatever the case, the new Goodyears are quiet, sticky, and fine in
the rain.
Pushed hard, the car and the tires don't complain, and on a dry
track, have reputedly taken the C5 past the 1.0-g mark. (Without
testing equipment, I wasn't able to verify this claim.) The Corvette
is stable at high speeds, with just a little bit of understeer
through most corners. Getting it to oversteer means diving in much
too fast and applying the throttle. When you do, controlling the
car's wagging tail is something of a challenge, requiring some fancy
footwork&emdash;because of the car's gobs of torque, modulating the
throttle precisely enough is more difficult than in less powerful but
as-grippy cars such as the Porsche Boxster. But driving way too fast,
and getting into a situation like this, is so difficult to do because
of the car's grip and stability that you really have to want to do
it, and when you do, it's fun. Just keep it on a track until you've
got the moves down pat.
Much of the credit for the C5's great feel through the curves has
to be attributed to the car's new structure, a revolutionary design
that is founded on two massive, largest ever, hydroformed rails that
span the entire length of the car and from which all major bits hang.
Chief engineer Dave Hill and his crew fought an uphill battle to
implement this "backbone," as they like to call it&emdash;and it's
responsible for the car's solidity, not just through the driveline
and out to the wheels but also in the way the body panels fit and the
way the interior's free of squeaks and rattles.
The only real disappointment in the C5 is when you look at it. The
design is a well executed one, and with a low 0.29 cd, it's friendly
to the air, too. (The underbelly of the car, oft overlooked in the
design process, is a model of flatness, even with its multitude of
suspension bits, structural tunnels and gas tanks.) But the
double-bubble roof reminds me of the dear-departed Mazda RX-7, and
the flat plane of the rear panel bores me. The side vents with their
reverse-Ferarri strakes break up the side of the car unnecessarily,
and the wheels look like they came out of a bad Revell model kit.
Only the nose, with its bite-you-in-the-ass silver fangs and gorgeous
curves, turns me on, and even then it's ruined by a poorly designed,
hole-in-the-wall license-plate frame. Still, the overall balance of
the car&emdash;longer, lower, wider, with a fatter rear end and a
hunched-forward stance&emdash;is a great improvement over the C4's
cartoonish proportions.
All issues of speed, handling and styling aside, it's the ease of
access that the C5's capabilities enjoy that makes it such an
appealing package. Everything that the car can do is a foot-tip,
wheel-spin, or finger-roll away, with none of the haughtiness that
you'll find in other, more expensive supercars that sometimes feel
like they're initiating you.
In that sense, the C5 is a distinctly American
package&emdash;outgoing, friendly, and even inexpensive. There's no
better value for the money in the performance-car world, and there
are few cars that can match this new Corvette's numbers&emdash;at any
price.