Car Reviews > Corvette > Grand Sport > Corvette Grand Sport Car Review
This new US muscle car undeniably provides some genuine pace – but the price will most likely prove to be too high for most.
The Corvette Grand Sport is the brand new version of the well-known American sports car. The new Corvette Grand Sport fits into the already existing range below the Z06 but above the standard C6 and also proves to be much faster even than the super-charged ZR-1.
The brand new Grand Sport comes complete with very large cross-drilled brakes, a nicely striking pair of white stripes that are so memorably featured on the front wings and a wide front end that is equipped with a central air intake.
The new vehicle is able to obtain its power via a naturally aspirated 6.2-litre V8 petrol engine that is capable of a bhp rating of no less than 431, meaning that the car is able to more than live up to the rapid pace that seems to be promised by its extremely extrovert exterior. The Corvette Grand Sport is also able to go from 0-62 miles per hour in as little as just 4.7 seconds and reach a top speed of 186 miles per hour in the process.
As a cruiser, the Corvette Grand Sport also proves to be perhaps somewhat surprisingly laid-back. The ride is still firm enough, and yet at the same time the tall gearing of the automatic gearbox also allows it to be perfectly happy, even when cruising on low revs while on the motorway. It is only when you use the steering wheel-mounted paddles to change down that the quad exhausts start to really announce their presence in a very big way, while the large rear tyres also mean that there is an enormous amount of grip when on dry surfaces.
It is a somewhat different story when the car goes on narrow or very wet roads however. The tail starts to become very twitchy indeed, and the mixture of that wide body, left-hand drive layout, and low noise starts to make it very difficult to drive. It has to be said that the car also feels terribly American, with the interior plastics of the cramped cockpit being very dated indeed, the engine having a seriously uneconomical thirst for petrol and the canvas roof being very slow to operate.
These various shortcomings might perhaps be more easily forgivable were it not for that massive price tag, which is much the same as a Porsche 911 only far less desirable. If you want to get yourself noticed while on the road, then the Corvette Grand Sport will certainly do the trick with its thumping V8 soundtrack and brash muscle car aesthetics, all of which are of course part and parcel of the classic Corvette recipe. Yet the truth is that those unforgiving dynamics and that incredibly cheap looking interior are very hard to excuse when they come together with a price tag of £70,196. The automatic version is a little simpler to cope with than the much faster and more powerful manual incarnation, but unless you are a true hardcore aficionado of American cars, it is difficult to justify the expense for this vehicle.
by Autoweb