The 2020 C8 Corvette Stingray is Popular Mechanics’ Car of the Year

A sports car that will impress and satisfy anyone.  

Thanks to a combination of raw performance and practicality at an unbelievably low price, the new mid-engine C8 Corvette Stingray sits at the top of the Popular Mechanics Automotive Excellence Awards. This is the first non-electric car in three years to take the crown from Popular Mechanics, signaling the Corvette’s appeal to buyers of every walk of life.

The love for the new Corvette starts before the thing even arrives. Two entire generations have grown up looking at mid-engine sports cars with a type of holy reverence. Their speed, style, and exorbitant cost made them things to desire and strive towards. Now, being able to experience that type of exotic performance has been brought down to the everyman. With a starting price of one Lincoln under $60,000, the C8 Corvette Stingray is a proper bargain. Every domestic automaker sells a full-size pickup truck that costs more than that. Or to put into terms of the competition, you can buy three C8s for the cost of one 2020 Audi R8.

A small price means nothing if the Corvette can’t carry the torch of performance. As we all know by now, that was never going to be an issue for Popular Mechanics. With that 495 horsepower V8 giving the Corvette a sub-3-second sprint to 60 mph and a top speed nearing 200 mph, it is one of the fastest cars on sale today. What really drove home the win for Popular Mechanics is the Corvette’s day-to-day livability.

Being a site that is more focused on technology and practical function that raw performance, PM praised the Corvette’s ample cargo space, solid NVH isolation, and easy to use entertainment stack. To give you a better idea of just much the C8 Corvette wowed the judges; the last three winners of the Car of the Year award went to the Chevy Bolt, Tesla Model 3 and the Kia Niro. That is a set of automobiles that are not related in any way to the ethos of the Corvette.

It is this boundary-crossing nature of the new 2020 Corvette Stingray that proves that Chevy made the right choice in the move to a mid-engine architecture. Scream “blasphemy” all you want, the people have spoken.

Photos: General Motors

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