America's Best Gets Much Better: Chevy's Sexy C6 Corvette

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Chevrolet
America's Best Gets Much Better: Chevy's Sexy C6 Corvette
By Andrew Gardner; photos by the author
Dec 17, 2005, 01:17 PST

There are few vehicles in the world that can come even close to the level of name recognition that the Corvette has. And there are few vehicles which evoke such passion among such a large number of people. There are Ferrari freaks, but there is no one car with a prancing horse on the hood that has the history the Corvette has. There is the Porsche 911, which is double the price and has always been far more exclusive…and it’s slower. And there is the Mustang, which for 40 years has been a layman’s muscle car, and whose lower price tag easily invites a larger following. But the Corvette still goes back further. It’s America’s sports car. Since 1953 it has been the flagship for a nation, a bright banner screaming out loud that America knows how to build a car that can handle and perform among the world’s best.

It has not been a world beater or a vector for major innovation – except that the C5R has kicked the pants off anything and everything in its class in sports car racing across the globe. After the C6R got its first victory this year, beating out the supercar-based Maserati MC12 and Saleen S7R racecars in Atlanta, Georgia, it has stopped unabated, brushing aside the Aston Martin contingent at Le Mans by outlasting them and pummeling them into the ground in the last 6 hours for yet another modern Corvette racecar class victory at the French enduro classic. It has been another dominant championship season for the Corvette racing team, and this success on track is reflective of the performance potential in the C6. There is a lot of history behind this nameplate, enough (almost) to make Corvette a brand in itself – especially considering its uniqueness within the Chevrolet and broader GM brands.

There is enough racing history to give the Corvette great track and street credibility, especially in the last few years. And there was an especially great foundation laid down with the fifth iteration of this icon; materials science common sense met with good old fashioned American pushrod V8 guts on a solid chassis, and the result was a globally competitive sports car. It was the best Corvette yet.

So General Motor’s job was simple but difficult; make the sixth generation Corvette even better. Mission accomplished? Let’s look. The C5 had smooth, sexy lines and great road presence. It was low slung, and its taught, wide-body proportions made it look always ready to spring into action. The C6 takes a very, very similar shape, but adds significantly more sculpture. Where the C5 looked smoothed over, the C6 adds sharp ridges and valleys along the fender lines and around the cockpit to the deck lid. Where the C5 looked like clay modelers’ hands had run gently over it, the C6 looks like the modelers dug their hands into it and really went to work. One can walk around the car just briefly and gain a great appreciation for the work that went into making these varying, rising, falling, expanding and contracting and intersecting surfaces, and into making them come together to make an intriguing whole. The C6 has some of the best sculpture on the road. It’s drop-dead gorgeous in a way only the third-generation Corvette could approach, but still not touch.

And it’s so sexy. Far from being offensive, the C6’s form retains great sex appeal with its undulating outline. The view from inside the car, over the hood, is especially sexual; one could easily conclude the modeler was thinking of a Renaissance nude of a beautiful woman when designing the view out the front of the vehicle…please don’t let this thought distract you from driving. We will require you to hit the OK button on the nav center before gazing over that hood’s undulating profile, just as all manufacturers are required to do before granting you access to the navigation control screen; this is for your enjoyment when the car is stopped only. Besides, there is some serious driving to do.

The C5 had a very good chassis; the C6 has a great chassis. It provides the great foundation this low, wide, powerful car needs to really move. Even in convertible form this car is solid, exhibiting such a minimal amount of the flex characteristics convertibles used to be known for. There is no doubt that you can corner hard in this chassis. There is so little energy absorption in this structure, and thus you get great responsiveness. There is certainly room for improvement, as GM decided to keep the Z06 a hardtop only model, but for the middle-class-man this convertible turns in and straightens out as quickly as you please. This is certainly the best convertible chassis we’ve driven.

The C5 had a 345hp, 5.7-liter V8. The C6 block got opened up to provide 6 liters of displacement, which helps boost power output to 400 hp and torque up to 400 lb-ft. The boost in torque is very noticeable – the standard Corvette now has the muscle of the last-gen Z06, minus 5 horsepower. This is a big deal, and anyone who drives the C6 will certainly enjoy the simply great engine engineering that went into making this American classic even stronger. The C5 had an immense improvement over its predecessor in terms of driving dynamics, and the C6 brings that even further forward. The C6 rides on a fairly stiff suspension, one that allows for a comfortable ride but that could prove annoying for its transmittance of road bumps to those less performance-oriented consumers. The responsiveness of the steering is near immense. The C6 feels like it is on rails, exhibiting minimal body roll and sharp, quick turn-in. Certainly it is a little softer and less grippy than the C5 Z06, but you get nearly equal performance with more comfort – that’s an American ideal. Plus, the Z51 performance package offers stiffer suspension and bigger sway bars set to close the gap to the 2004 Z06 handling threshold even more.

The transmission of power from the engine to the wheels brings about the first major complaint. The automatic transmission in our test ride looked, felt, and behaved like the automatic transmission the C4 Corvette was equipped with. The shifter design was exactly the same, it felt a little clunky – just like the C4’s auto tranny – and it jumped into drive from park or neutral just like the C4 did. This is because the C6 is equipped with a transmission designed to efficiently transmit power, at a sacrifice in comfort. The shifting was actually pretty smooth, which is commendable for a sports car as affordable as this, and one with 400 lb-ft of torque to manage such as this C6. The shift mapping, however, was poor. The transmission often felt unsure of what gear to be in. You had to be really smooth with the throttle pedal to get the performance you wanted – hard acceleration followed by a very minor decreased in throttle angle could bring about a sudden upshift from second to third that puts a damper on your forward progress. Getting kick-down took a little work, perhaps because transmission engineers at GM decided to opt for greater fuel economy. You really had to dig in if you were driving above 2500 rpm to get a downshift. The saving grace with this car is that the torque is high and the weight is low, so a lack of a downshift does not make for engine groans – it just means the acceleration is not up to its peak thrills, unless you give that computer a hefty boot to the head. We complain because Cadillac has far better shift-mapping even in the $30,000 CTS.

More gears would also help, as there are only four. But four equal drinks don’t hit every person the same. With this much torque and low weight, four gears are adequate to cover both cruising/high gas mileage operation and high performance needs. Gears 1-2 offer severe acceleration, and there is strong acceleration well past 4,000rpm in 3rd as you cruise way past 100mph. Even fourth gear acceleration is not bad as you approach stratospheric speeds, but you certainly won’t experience that legally…this Corvette has some hefty top end good for a claimed 180 mph top speed.

But, wait: there’s hope yet. For the 2006 model, GM has fitted a 6-speed automatic transmission with wheel-mounted paddle shifters, and it incorporates GM’s Performance Algorithm Shifting. We fully expect this setup, which should be quite similar to what we drove and enjoyed on the CTS, to make a big difference in the performance and driveability of the C6’s powertrain. The convertible top on the C6 was sturdy enough to be considered modern. It wasn’t too noisy on the road, although once you get past freeway speeds you can really tell it’s a soft top. A certain amount of tire/road noise does come through the body, but as speed increased the convertible model seemed as noisy as the Z06, a car more extremely designed for light weight. The standard top is manually operated, and there is an optional, mostly-power top; the power top, unfortunately, needs you to push it out of the windshield frame, after unlocking it, before the retracting/closing motors kick in. This is not something you would expect to have to deal with, as even the much less expensive Mustang doesn’t require this much manual operation. Then, on closing, you have to try and tug down on both corners – annoying and a bit tasking if you are alone and do not have the arm reach of a 6-foot tall person. This falls under the category of things you have to live with to get a 400hp sports car that drives like a dream and only costs $45,000.

The interior is also lackluster, though it is a definite improvement over the C5, which had a center consoler that looked as cheap as a Geo Metro’s. The C6’s center console creaks when you drive over big bumps and squeaks and flexes if you bump your knee into it. GM tried to snaz the inside up a bit with some shiny silver plastic on the console, but they would have been better off making more of the center console out of the same material as the dash, and focusing on making the console sturdier rather than prettier. But the fit is pretty good and the finish quality is fine – the interior looks nice, if it is not the sturdiest and least prone to start rattling over time. Perhaps that is something else you have to accept in exchange for a nice low weight, but not every lightweight vehicle has a creaky interior.

The gauge design, a big upside to this cockpit, is carried over from 2004: the checkerboard pattern engraved in the mold that shoots out the plastic part for the gauges displays the pattern of that sweet checkered flag you will be seeing before the driver of any other car within reasonable sight of this car’s price range. Cool blue lights highlight exactly how much over the speed limit you are traveling at night, and the orange needle is your rough indicator of your rate of change of the car’s - and of your engine’s - speeds.

The seats are the number one seller for this interior. The comfortable leather-clad units are very supportive and very accommodating of a large variety of people. They’re the pair of seats that love you so much they hug you – the side bolsters are adjustable for a range of more than a couple of inches in width so you get a fairly custom-fit seat whether you are as skinny as the author (150lbs at 6 feet-2 inches skinny) or more like 250-300 lbs at 6 feet tall. The Corvette is well ahead of the market with this feature – it’s even ahead of the luxury sports sedan market.

The stereo is very good, although acoustics of the cabin are not so ideal as a luxury sedan’s interior. It really shouldn’t have to be said that the only sound system needed is accessible through a simple rolling down of the window. The engine noise is fairly subdued in the C6, but that 6.0-liter pushrod small block sounds great in tunnels or anywhere you open it up. It has a mellow, serene, not too deep rumble (especially considering its 6.0-liter displacement). This car could sound wicked at idle if carbureted. Much like its predecessor, the C6 sounds good and gritty in the middle engine speeds, but up top you get an absolutely lovely-awesome-wonderful, metal-banging-metal-repeatedly-and-forcefully sound as you approach 5 and 6000 rpm. It sounds like a refined muscle car at low engine speeds and like a racecar at the top end. That 6-liter motor sounds almost as good as it performs.

The electronics are fun –the upgraded stereo features a navigation screen that flips out to provide access to the CD/DVD player and the DVD slot for the nav system, which works well with its map scale-adjustment and simple button operation. You look as slick in this car as in the XLR now, because of its lack of door handles. Cruise-walk on up to your hot new Corvette with the key in your pocket, reach inside the depression in the rear quarter panel just aft of the door, bring your fingers out lightly and pull the door open as you hear the electro-mechanical solenoid-actuated door locks release with a light “chick.” Keyless entry and push-button start make this an even cooler ride, and you get to get in on SAAB’s knee safety game by having the keys removed from the steering column during driving.

The biggest highlight to the electronics is the Corvette’s stability system. The Active Handling system we first experienced on the Z06 was tuned well to aid in controlled power slides. The C6 is appropriately more dialed back, intended for the more casual and less-trained hot-rodder, versus the system in the Z06. However, GM says it is tuned to be more hands-off than it was on the C5 Corvette, and it’s smarter at handling stability issues, too. The traction control is more dialed back at low speed than at high speed. The system is touted to be very hands-off at low speed, allowing you to get plenty of rear wheel slippage and generate a plume of smoke large enough to make everyone within a 10-mile radius think there’s a house on fire (slight exaggeration…ok, how about everyone on the block thinks your car’s on fire? That’s reasonable, and it’s true, at least as far as the tires go). In Competitive Mode - the most hands-off mode - this is certainly true, and it is even possible to break the tires loose with the traction control fully on. There is a third, or a second really, mid-level electronic driving assist mode deemed “traction control off” which is less restrictive than the default mode but more clamped down than Competitive Mode. Just turning the traction control off doesn’t mean the Active Handling system goes away, and you have moderate leeway in what range of dynamic situations you may get yourself into. Surprisingly, it can take some effort to break the wheels loose here, requiring bring the engine up to about 3000revs before letting of the brake and laying the throttle pedal down into it’s most fully reclined yet most thoroughly unrelaxed position.

In Competitive Mode, you can just stomp on the throttle, watch that tach needle whip all the way around far too fast for the car to actually accelerate (with 400lb-ft, anyway, this isn’t a rocket sled) and accordingly listen to the tires break loose and smell the ensuing smoke diffuse through the surrounding air to the nostrils of your slowly forwardly accelerating body. That’s raw American power right there. In any mode of electronic assistance, there is a loophole. If you gain enough rotational momentum quickly enough, the ABS and fuel cutoff will be unable to quickly clamp down your spin. This does not mean - we’re extrapolating here - you can easily perform multiple full sequential spins on a dry paved road with the traction control on. It does mean that if you drive like a moron with no respect for your driving skill, with little or no forethought to the tail-end lashing-out that will ensue from, say, lighting up the tires at a light and keeping them lit all the way through a turn, you have a good chance of losing control of the car, if only briefly. The Corvette does not cover for a lack of driving skill in all situations. If you know and respect your limits, this car can certainly make you look like a better driver than you are. If you are heavy footed but not perceptive or quick with the wheel, stay out of Competitive Driving Mode.

That is all expansive on one small part of the traction control. For the most part, as we elaborated on in our review of the C5 Z06, Active Handling is a remarkable piece of programming that elevates your driving status a couple of notches. You can always push the limits of this car, and with the traction control on you will always stay in line (unless you really jerk on the wheel and stab the throttle hard). With traction control off you can start to generate significant tire noise in the corners and see a bit of rear end slip on some cases. The main point of Competitive Mode is to allow you to step onto a track and explore the car’s limits while staying safe. You get rear wheel slip but when it looks like you’ve lost control, or are definitely about to, this system kicks in. This makes you look like a pro that knows just where the limit of adhesion is in every corner, and are certainly capable of pushing the car into making the tires scream just a bit while staying under control.

The steering is good, very direct, very responsive, but far from over sensitive at high speeds. The assist is very low, which is good, because you get a good feel for what the Corvette’s front wheels are doing. However, the steering is rather heavy, heavier than one would expect for the level of assist given and the car’s low weight. It is not difficult (for those involved in this review, at least) to maneuver this car through quick, tight turns or under heavy cornering loads, so that steering weight is not much of a complaint…it could be an issue if you are counting tenths of a second, however.

The turn in on this Corvette is better than the last. We drool at the implication –the guarantee, rather – that it gets better with the Z51 performance package and even more so with the Z06. The stock C6 responds well to quick inputs of the steering wheel, exhibiting understeer when your tires just can’t transfer the Corvette’s forward momentum at the rate you desire. Try making a U-turn at 15-20 mph, for example, without kicking out the tail end. You will watch the car go more or less straight while the ABS pulsates madly. That’s all just simple physics. But the suspension - with the familiar-to-Corvette-fans short/long cast aluminum upper and lower control arms at all four corners, again with transverse-mounted leaf springs - does its job of quickly absorbing the body roll resultant from any discrepancy between the pointed direction of the tires and the car’s initial direction. Below, the Z51 performance package, the Corvette starts with a standard suspension, and then moves up to a level-2 package with the addition of GM’s magneto-rheological shocks, which can undergo damping rate changes in milliseconds to adjust to varying road conditions and driving styles. We have yet to be overly impressed with the magnitude of this system’s flexibility, but are still quite impressed with the technology.

Even without the Z51 package, the Corvette very quickly comes to a set and digs in for a fast corner. It’s not as amazing as a tiny little 2500lb sports car with a four-cylinder motor up front, but it’s close enough. The turn-in delay is unnoticeable in many corners, where the Corvette seems to seamlessly transition from straight to corner. In really tight turns, you can see just how much squish you have in those springs – not too much for something this side of a racecar – and the car impresses with its eagerness to turn as much as hammer down a straight.

Along with any other performance-oriented feature on this car, the brakes receive very good marks. There is no lack of stopping power despite fairly light brake pedal feel. 12.8-inch front and 12-inch rear discs (the rotors are cross-drilled with the Z51 performance package) provide more than enough gripping power to find the limits of adhesion under braking of those big tires in front and rear. There is a simple balance between acceleration out of a corner and deceleration in that makes the brakes feel right for the Corvette. Finally, none of these impressive numbers would yield impressive performance numbers without a sturdy frame. Hydroformed steel rails create the base of the skeleton. Cored composite floors and an Aluminum cockpit finish the strong structure. The convertible weighs just 20 pounds more than the coupe, yet the windshield frame remains remarkably still under a variety of unsettling conditions.

For performance, it’s all here. 400hp. 400lb-ft. A solid chassis. Stiff suspension. A good six speed manual transmission if you make the right purchase. With any paved road ahead of you, you are in good seats, on good wheels. A good amount of throttle input gets you moving along smoothly and quickly, and you will be exceeding speed limits on any road before you know it (Autobahn/Autostrada excepted). Firm braking leads to quick deceleration, and smooth rotations of the steering wheel move you into and out of the turns with speed and ease. The whole operation can be quick and seamless and lively with the Corvette, a very precise and enjoyable exercise colored with the mild roar of a V8 just slightly tasked and the moderate turbulence of the wind that curls over the windscreen and into your hair. You are very much awake, but not necessarily sweating, because the Corvette accomplishes all this with such ease that it is just purely enjoyable. That won’t last long. Toss aside any hopes of staying Bruce Wayne in this hotmobile. That’s 400 lb-ft of torque under your right foot. That’s 0-60 in 4.5 seconds (with the manual transmission), maybe 5-flat if you’re not much of a drag racer. That’s a lighting up of the rear wheels followed by hookup and launch of those 3179 pounds (3199 for the convertible) and a quick transition from rumble to scream for the 6.0-liter V8. That’s a gobbling up of the straightaway with a ferocious appetite and a taste for asphalt.

80…100…120…140…ludicrous speed. The power just keeps coming. Sure acceleration drops as aerodynamic drag increases with the square of the velocity, but that V8 fights back until you can hardly hear it over the wind noise surrounding this topless beauty, and then you are hard onto those brakes, which happens easily with the relatively light pedal feel, balancing just outside ABS activation, watching that speedometer drop as it indicates a reversal of all that work those big eight pistons just did, then smoothly lift off as you add steering input and crank over for that sharp right hander, feel just a little bit of body roll as appropriate for a reasonably comfortably riding sports car and then the car is set and the tires stick and you are turning and your body doesn’t move thanks to those properly adjusted side bolsters but you feel the pressure build against your left side as it is drawn slightly into that smooth leather, and then the pressure on your left side relaxes and the pressure on your back increases as you lower your steering angle and increase the throttle angle and accelerate powerfully onto that short straight and on to the next right hander, same gear, more speed, but less smooth as you encounter a bump just after entry – which the Corvette handles well, letting you know very much that it’s there but without being launched into the next lane – and then you add some throttle only to watch the radius tighten up on you suddenly, which is not a problem because you lift off not too quickly and add a little more steering input and the nose tucks in while the rear tires make just a bit of noise but stay in line ( maybe with a bit of help from Active Handling) and you move into that new cornering line and hold and add throttle and claw for that last bit of grip before you finally see the exit and start straightening out and roll hard on the throttle and explode onto that straightaway with all the torque those 400 ponies can push through that crankshaft through the transmission and on back to the 10-inch wide rear wheels. Meanwhile, any car under $100k that was not lost in the cloud of smoke generated by your rear rubbers at the last stoplight was certainly lost by the grip and balance exerted by this formidable performer. How’s that sound? And for just $45,000, the same price one paid for a new C5 Corvette with lesser looks and lesser handles and 55 less horsepower, though still one to receive high marks and outperform the competition given the price? This Corvette features startling power that you can get used to – it’s not too much to handle, especially given the very helpful, capable Active Handling system and the hope that you don’t go slamming on the gas in Competitive Mode before you’ve got your first 10 miles in the car. The automatic transmission did steal some of the fun in this car, but the LS2 V8 has power to please anyway. This sexy ride has amazing undulating curves and a very sculpted figure – who can turn down a ride in a hot body painted red? The C6 is so well balanced and poised that you can do what you please with it – make it understeer, make it oversteer, make it drift, do your burnouts, do your donuts – or drive your mom around calmly and legally and mostly comfortably and enjoy the ride but smile all the while knowing that the passing of 99% of everything else out there is just a firm stab of the throttle away. The seats hug you and love you. The power thrills. The brakes, chill. The balance yields quick maneuvers and the tires grip. The Corvette is fantastic, affordable, American sports car execution at peak form. It’s a form everyone can appreciate.