Chevrolet Corvette

It begins, as the best conversations tend to, over a bacon and egg roll. We’re gobbling breakfast in a small-town cafe, peering through the window at the swoops, curves and bright colours of the cars assembled for this group test when photographer Brook pops the question: “That Corvette… is it a muscle car, sportscar or a supercar?”

There’s a pause and some puzzled expressions before we all talk at once.

“Definitely a muscle car; the Corvette has always been a muscle car.”

“But it’s mid-engined now. And look at it! It’s a proper wedge. That’s a supercar!”

“Nah, it’s like a 911. A sportscar that can mix it with supercars.”

It takes another 15 minutes, and some granular theorising – “isn’t a muscle car based on a regular production model?” – before we finally agree: GM has changed the recipe so radically for this C8 generation that it requires further exploration to properly pin it down. That’s job one for this comparison test.

The other cars are easier to wrap your head around. Well, mostly. The Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe and Audi RS5 are ubiquitous German performance coupes that are, essentially, European muscle cars. They certainly look like muscle cars, with their blistered guards, tough stances and sinister grey and green paint schemes. And in the case of the AMG, with its lumpy, wet-sounding idle, it sounds like a proper muscle car, too.

The Basics

The F-Type is an out-and-out sportscar. Sensually styled and represented here in V8-powered P450 guise, Jag’s ageing coupe (it first appeared way back in 2013) has recently been treated to a gentle mid-life update that brought tweaked exterior styling – I’m still not sure about those squinty headlights, mind – and a tech overhaul for the cabin.

Jaguar Australia also took the chance to ditch the four- and six-cylinder versions of the F-Type Down Under, meaning the range is now V8 only. Down-sizing be damned! Now that’s logic we can get behind.

What really unites this quartet is price. They all land between $160,000 and $180,000, and while the AMG, Audi and Jaguar are established players with loyal followings, they’re also the exact cars the Corvette needs to steal customers away from if it wants to succeed. That’s job two.

The F-Type range is now V8 only. Down-sizing be damned! Now that’s logic we can get behind.

Our plan to discover how the ’Vette measures up is simple: head two hours east out of Melbourne to tackle the brilliant driving roads around the Yarra Ranges National Park. Mount Donna Buang and the enticingly named Icy Creek are both on the agenda but there’s a problem: the weather isn’t playing ball.

It’s raining hard and when we park the cars near the summit of Mount Donna, it begins to snow. Heavily. Almost $800K of (mostly) rear-drive performance cars on roads covered in snow and ice? What could possibly go wrong?

While photographer Brook grabs the chance to shoot some details and hero statics in the snow – I swear I heard him giggle with glee at one point – it gives us a chance to take stock.

There isn’t a shrinking violet here but in the visual stakes, it’s the Corvette that hits hardest.

Love or hate the design, there’s no denying it’s dramatic. This is the first time in 70 years that a Corvette has bolted its engine behind the driver and GM’s design team (headed by Aussie Mike Simcoe) has made full use of the new layout. The nose plunges provocatively, the windscreen has a proper supercar rake and huge air intakes gawp at the hip point. It looks crazily wide and low. A proper exotic.

I wouldn’t have mine in this shade of blue, or with the racing stripes, but the 'Vette oozes presence.

There isn’t a shrinking violet here but in the visual stakes, it’s the Corvette that hits hardest.

There are some clumsy details, though. The front number plate housing (something not required in the States) is a heavy-handed, tacked-on eyesore and there’s something amiss around the rear haunches. They’re too slab-sided; too visually heavy.

And I’ve never seen a car make 20-inch wheels look so small, or squander its stance by housing the alloys so deep within the wheel wells. But these are minor, objective complaints. If you’re looking to turn heads, the Chevy is unbeatable.

The visual drama continues inside. Swing your behind into the driver’s seat and you’re confronted with a cabin that initially feels quite alien. The steering wheel is the shape of a 50 cent piece (remember those?), big high-definition screens are angled toward you and there’s a discombobulating amount of small buttons lined up on the edge of a high, sweeping centre console.

Brilliant driving position, though, and forward vision is superb thanks to the short nose and low scuttle but immediately there are some issues.

Our particular car has flashes of white trim on the dash that reflect distractingly onto the windscreen, rear vision is dreadful through a section of glass the size of a postage stamp, and while the fighter-jet cabin cocoons the driver it leaves passengers feeling separated from the action.

With his shots in the bag, snapper Brook calls for some action photography which sees us learn two things: 1) performance-focused summer tyres do not perform well on freezing tarmac 2) despite being the cheapest and least powerful of this quartet, the Audi is easily the quickest and most capable in these conditions.

Controversial. That’s how I’d describe this generation of RS5. First launched back in 2017, it was derided for lacking involvement and personality but the car we’re testing here copped an update in 2019. It brought even angrier styling (those three vents above the larger grille hark back to the Sport Quattro), a cabin overhaul and the inclusion of RS1 and RS2 shortcut buttons for the drive modes.

You can also spec it with gold wheels that, to our eyes, would be about the only thing that could make our particular Sonoma green example even more appealing. Audi knows how to do understated aggression, doesn’t it?

And anyway, today we’re reaping the benefits of the RS5’s more reserved personality. It mightn’t have the cartoonish loutishness or throttle-steer playfulness of the C63 or F-Type but it rushes up our snow-covered section with the surefootedness of a mountain goat.

Audi knows how to do understated aggression, doesn’t it?

The others feel like newborn giraffes. They switch suddenly from butt-puckering understeer to ‘oh crap’ levels of oversteer and it’s the AMG that’s the biggest handful.

It’s running the most hardcore rubber courtesy of staggered Michelin Pilot Super Sports and it feels as though someone has wrapped its alloys with sections of PVC piping. At one point it simply runs out of forward momentum and can’t make it any further up the hill.

But it’s when the radio crackles into life and a concerned voice says “Er, guys, the Jag is stuck…” that we decide to cut our losses and regroup tomorrow. One final observation from a frustrating day? If you’re looking for an evocatively styled sportscar that’s also a brilliant GT, go for the F-Type.

Once we liberate it from a muddy bog I slip inside for the schlep home and discover it’s a superb long-distance cruiser. Lovely loping suspension, brilliant driving position, solid refinement and an effortless, torquey V8 that treats your ears to a deep, burbly soundtrack. No seat heaters, though. Bummer.

Day two kicks off with a squelch. Impossibly it’s even wetter than yesterday but at least we’re heading for marginally warmer climes. I start in the C63 and with the mercury hovering closer to 10 degrees instead of zero it feels fractionally less grip-limited. Still a caged animal, though.

In conditions like these, you need a friendly chassis and initially, the big Benz feels the opposite. Breathe on the throttle and its rear axle squirms and bucks. Lean on the front tyres and they slide glassily across the surface of the road. Much of this is down to the compound of those Michelins.

They need heat to work but push through the initial glassiness and there’s actually more grip to play with than you think. And when you learn to trust that the adhesion is there, the AMG becomes properly exciting. Actually scrap that. It’s genuinely addictive.

Much of this is down to the nuclear bomb nestled under the bonnet. My goodness this is a cracker of an engine. A proper, barrel-chested beast of a V8. With outputs of 375kW/700Nm it easily outguns the other powertrains in this test and trumps them for personality too.

The big 4.0-litre lump never, ever feels highly strung or stressed and because it’s so robust and torquey you can be fooled into thinking it does its best work low in the rev range. Delve further into the throttle, however, and it offers a seemingly bottomless degree of shove right up to the 7000rpm redline.

... Much of this is down to the nuclear bomb nestled under the bonnet. My goodness this is a cracker of an engine.

Sounds proper, too. I’d buy this car for the soundtrack alone. The Corvette might be louder but the AMG sounds meaner. More sinister. As though it’ll tie cement blocks around your feet and push you into a river without a second thought.

And there’s genuine talent to the chassis. Like the RS5, the C63 benefitted from an update a few years ago but the AMG’s refresh was more substantial. It gained the same nine-speed auto as the E63 and amped up the configurable chassis tech, big time.

Suddenly we had nine-stage traction control and a multi-mode AMG Dynamics submenu to play with that altered the behaviour of the diff, torque vectoring and stability control. You control the systems through two cheap-feeling dials that hang from the steering wheel spokes and in its ‘Master’ setting the C63 does the best job of treading the greasy tightrope between grip and slip.

You find yourself catching slides, power oversteering and managing small slip angles of understeer with the confidence of knowing that unless you really stuff it up, the car has your back.

It’s brutish and bombastic but there’s also a decent degree of bandwidth, too. The firmly sprung suspension offers just enough compliance in Comfort for day-to-day driving. The cabin strikes a sweet balance between tech and ergonomics. The back seat is roomy enough for adults on short journeys and the driving position is nicely judged.

A quick word on seats, though. If you value comfort it is best to avoid the optional $3700 AMG Performance Seats. I’ve seen torture devices with more padding and less intrusive bolstering.

The RS5 couldn’t be more different to the AMG. With the surface drying and the temp rising, the Audi loses some of the edge that saw it lead the pack yesterday.

It still has more grip than the others and is secure and confidence-inspiring but after the adrenalin shower that is the C63, the car from Ingolstadt just isn’t as exciting. The engine doesn’t have the same sense of bottomless power and the exhaust is the least inspiring of this quartet.

Although it sounds okay, an octave above the others, it has a deep, almost distorted reverb sound when you upshift or lift off the throttle. Some of the Wheels road-testing team loved it but to my ears, it lacks the tone and character of the V8s in the other cars.

Impressive what it does with 2.9 litres, though. Of all the engines on test, it feels the most highly strung and sophisticated and it pairs well with a quick-shifting, short-ratio eight-speed automatic. Performance is punchy but thrust has never been in short supply in the RS5. What it typically needs more of is involvement…

Like the Corvette, which we’ll get to soon, you need to finesse your driving style to extract the best from the RS5. The optional carbon brakes are brilliant, so lean on those to get the nose set into a corner and then, even before you spot the exit, mash the throttle and let the Sport differential do its thing.

Drive it this way and the RS5 is hugely capable and blisteringly quick but there are some chinks in its armour. The steering is light and keeps you at arm’s length. The damping is overly firm and bouncy in Dynamic. And where the other cars challenge and reward you in equal measure, charging up a winding road in the RS5 is simply less heart-thumping.

Like the Corvette, which we’ll get to soon, you need to finesse your driving style to extract the best from the RS5.

Engagement isn’t something lacking in the F-Type. Its steering is even woollier than the Audi’s and you feel even further away from the front axle (both literally and figuratively) but the Jag is dripping with character. If the Audi is an impeccably dressed but reserved architect, the F-Type is a blue-blooded aristocrat that captivates the room with its charm.

Its most obvious drawcard is the engine. You might think a supercharged 5.0-litre V8 is outdated and antiquated in 2022 but you’d be wrong. This is a joyful powertrain. Incredibly, the P450 is the least potent F-Type you can buy in Australia but even though it’s about 100kW/100Nm down on the flagship R variant, not once did I yearn for more power.

The noise plays a key role in the excitement stakes. There’s a deep V8 purr low in the rev range but the timbre and volume both lift an octave as you pass 3500rpm. The main benefit of wringing it all the way to the 7000rpm redline is what happens when you pull the upshift paddle.

Where the other cars bang home gear changes with whipcrack efficiency, the Jag seems to revel in them. To draw them out and marinate in the raspy, almost slurry ‘braaaaaaaaaap’ as you shift up a cog.

The rest of the dynamic package feels like a GT car spoiling for a fight with much meaner machinery. All of the key elements seem to have had their corners rounded off. The steering is smooth and more slowly geared than the others, the brake pedal has a pronounced sneeze factor at the top of its travel, the gear ratios are long and lazily stacked and the suspension has a suppleness that’s missing in both the Audi and AMG.

As we discovered yesterday, this makes it a superb long-distance cruiser but the trade-off is that you feel a step removed from the action in cut-and-thrust cornering. It also feels the biggest and widest of this group, which can make it tricky to place with confidence and because you sit so far back in the chassis, any moments of yaw feel magnified.

Where the other cars bang home gear changes with whipcrack efficiency, the Jag seems to revel in them. To draw them out and marinate in the raspy, almost slurry ‘braaaaaaaaaap’ as you shift up a cog.

There’s talent lurking beneath the surface. Push through the vague steering and slacken off some of the electronic nannies and the F-Type responds eagerly. Great brakes, too, once you delve deep into the pedal travel, and the seating position is the best of the group. But you get the sense the Jag tolerates being driven hard rather than relishes it.

Which leaves the Corvette. Drive it after the others and it instantly feels on another level for sportiness and intent. You peer through a windscreen with a low scuttle, you can spot the rocker covers of the big LT2 V8 behind you in the rear-view mirror and the degree of steering response and chassis agility take a noticeable step up.

At 1545kg the Corvette isn’t especially light for a mid-engined performance car but in this company, it's a virtual welterweight. It dives into corners and you can really lean on the front axle – provided you keep it loaded. Typically mid-engined cars can get snappy if you carry the brake right to the apex but today, the Corvette doesn’t so much reward trail braking as demands it.

Bleed off the brake too early and it’ll slip into understeer before snapping savagely into oversteer, which results in a few hair-raising moments. Learn to keep the weight on the nose, however, and the 'Vette is ferociously fast.

Like the others, it has adjustable drive modes but you have more parameters to play with. You can tweak the firmness of the brake pedal through three stages, for example, and you can save your favourite settings in an individual mode accessed through a ‘Z’ button on the steering wheel. One thing to avoid? Track mode for the steering. It’s too heavy and magnifies the lack of connection rather than solves it.

Like the Jag and the AMG, the engine dominates proceedings in the Corvette. The core of the LT2 V8 is ancient – it still has pushrods! – but it’s also dry-sumped and pairs with a sophisticated eight-speed gearbox from Tremec. It’s the same ’box used in the Maserati MC20 and it’s spookily good. Not quite as quick or as polished as a Porsche PDK but bloody close.

Dial the powertrain into its most aggressive setting and the 'Vette is savage in a straight line. You need to feed in the throttle on wet roads but at full noise it’ll monster the others in this test for sheer acceleration. And it sounds mega. It’s the loudest car here but there’s musicality to go with the volume.

Chevrolet hasn’t forgotten about the practical stuff either. The ride on adaptive dampers is astonishingly supple and controlled, there’s loads of cabin storage and two boots: a small one in the nose and a big one, which can swallow a bag of golf clubs, packaged behind the engine.

Does all this make the Corvette the best car here? Objectively, yes. It’s the quickest, the lightest, the most exotic, turns the most heads and once you factor in the price of options, it’s the cheapest, too. So it wins in this company. GM might have drastically altered the Corvette’s DNA for this C8 generation but ultimately it still delivers what it always has: supercar performance for muscle car money. Stick that in your bacon and egg roll.

As for the others, they’re trickier to separate. The Jag is beautiful and likeable but in this group it’s outgunned for ultimate pace and ability so comes home last.

The Audi’s pace, excellent build quality and tenacious grip see it edge the Jag but it can’t match the bombastic C63 for character. The AMG is a spinning bow-tie of a car. One that leans into the silliness, the noise and theatre but never feels like a caricature because it’s built on a base of genuine talent.

In many ways that makes it similar to the Corvette. And while this V8-powered C63 mightn’t be around for much longer – a hybrid successor with half the cylinders arrives soon – it’s nice to know the 'Vette’s arrival in Australia means its spirit lives on.

SCORING

Chevrolet Corvette: 8.5/10

Mercedes-AMG C63 S: 8.0/10

Audi RS5: 8.0/10

Jaguar F-Type: 7.5/10

Specifications