2017 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport Tested w/o Z07 Package: Still All the Vette You Need - Car and Driver
The Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport might as well be twirling a butterfly knife at the intersection of Performance Avenue and Value Lane with a pack of unfiltered smokes rolled up in the sleeve of a plain white tee. It’s an intimidating thug from the Bowtie Gang that both outperforms and undercuts the competition. It’s a bully that goads others into street fights they can’t win and starts just as many brawls among friends (or co-workers if you happen to work here). Nothing at its price comes close to putting up the performance numbers it generates.
Okay, maybe there is one rival. Less than a year ago, a Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 knocked off a Z51-equipped Corvette Stingray in a two-up comparison test. This Corvette Grand Sport, though, is a slightly different animal. With all the Z06’s go-fast bits except for the LT4 supercharged V-8, the GS proves that power isn’t everything. Our test car also lacked the Z07 package (carbon-ceramic brake rotors, upgraded suspension, nearly racing-grade rubber) and the competition seats. Combined, those options add $9990 to the price of a GS. The good news? You don’t need ’em.
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This GS hung onto the skidpad at 1.13 g and stopped from 70 mph in a lung-collapsing 136 feet. While its less aggressive tires likely mean this car couldn’t match the Z07-equipped Grand Sport’s time of 2:47.1 at the most recent Lightning Lap, we’re confident it would come close enough that we’d rather spend $10K elsewhere.
Atop those braking and cornering scores, add the glorious engine that unleashes 460 horses when you crop the throttle—it propels the GS to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds and through a quarter-mile in 12.3 seconds at 117 mph—and you have quite possibly the best performance value on the market. All of the car’s might is baked into the Grand Sport’s $66,445 base price. Headlining the options on our test example was the $4455 2LT package, which includes a lot of minor and pretty much unnecessary elements, such as a luggage net, front-view cameras, and heated and ventilated seats with memory. The $1795 Performance Data Recorder produces high-quality dash-cam footage of your pole lap at Watkins Glen—or keeps tabs on parking valets—and also includes navigation. Racing stripes ($995), Carbon Flash badging ($100), black wheels ($495), and the Heritage package, which adds fender and interior hash marks and floor mats for $795, add strictly visual horsepower, so choose your options wisely.
The only contemporary that comes close to matching the Grand Sport’s performance is the Mustang Shelby GT350R, which starts at $64,270 without a radio. Similarly optioned, the cars carry essentially the same price tag. Arguing the merits of one to the other’s fan base is a futile exercise, as blue ovals and bow ties won’t get along until a common enemy materializes.
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What no spec panel or features breakdown can convey is how composed the Grand Sport is on rough roads. Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires measuring P285/30ZR-19 up front and P335/25ZR-20 in back occasionally follow the ruts and grooves in the road a bit too much, but GM’s Magnetic Ride Control dampers do an admirable job of quelling extraneous wheel movement. The trick fluid in the dampers varies its viscosity, and thus damping force, with electrical current, making for a ride that’s smooth when you want it and firm when you need it. General Motors has polished this technology for more than a decade in Cadillacs and Corvettes, and it shows. Cars this quick and with this much grip aren’t expected to deliver comfort and composure like a family sedan, but this one does.
The base seats not only save money over the competition buckets included in the Z07 package, they are more comfortable on long trips, although we’d want the upgraded thrones in any Corvette we planned to track on a regular basis. There still is a good amount of flex in the base seats when the Corvette is pushed to its extremes, something we have come to live with. We do, however, plan to mention it in every Corvette review in hopes it will be rectified when the mid-engine C8 debuts in the not-too-distant future.
Even without the Z07 package (which we tested this summer), the standard Grand Sport is anything but base. Both it and the GT350 made our 2017 10Best Cars list. Whether they continue to win such honors is a whole other question—and certainly not one that will be answered on a single street corner.
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