The Corvette is going electric! This fall, customers start taking delivery of the quickest Corvette ever, the E-Ray hybrid. Combining combustion and electric power, the E-Ray is designed to deliver the ultimate street Corvette experience. Just as the 2020 mid-engine Sting Ray realized a Corvette layout first promised more than 50 years ago, the E-Ray’s all-wheel drive delivers on legendary Corvette engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov’s vision and experiments with all-wheel grip for the Vette even before that. The E-Ray is available in coupe and convertible models, starting around $105,000. A full electro-Vette is in the pipeline, too.
Pioneering Corvette chief engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov would have been thrilled to see the new-generation mid-engine Vette comparing favorably with far more expensive sports cars. And he would have been floored to see the new-for-2023 Z06 version called “an American Ferrari” by a leading automotive magazine. Lapping a racetrack faster than all but a handful of exotics and priced from $110,000 to nearly $180,000 with all options, the Corvette Z06 has indeed “arrived” in a new echelon of the performance car world.
The first mid-engine Corvette is finally going into production in February. The $59,995 base price seems almost unbelievable until you remember that Chevrolet will make it up in volume.
The Corvette long carried a stigma of crudeness versus the Europeans, and the Chevy bowtie just doesn’t carry the status of a Porsche crest. That reputation had been eroding since the late 1990s, though not everyone noticed. Today, any Porsche 911 driver not looking at the new Stingray with just a twinge of horsepower envy ought to check his pulse.
