C7 Reaction Round Up: What the Press is Saying

“Europe, you can forget your old-world snobbishness. America’s great sports car is today re-born. It’s recognizably a Corvette, but its every component has had a hard-reset. If you want your hammering front-engined V8 rumble to come wrapped in the iridescent technologies of our age, you’ve come to the right place.” 

?Paul Horrell, TopGear.com 

“No matter that the Corvette ZR1 is faster than an Enzo and a 911 around the ‘Ring. No matter that a Z06 regularly spanks BMWs at track events. No matter the growl of a Corvette V8 always turns heads, whether you’re in Athens, Georgia or Athens, Greece.

The Corvette isn’t ‘world class.’ It’s too crude. Too loud. Too American.

Bullshit. If the new Corvette isn’t world class then it’s because the world hasn’t invented that class yet.”

?Matt Hardigree, Jalopnik   

“It takes cojones to resurrect a name like Stingray, and the Corvette team held off until they were sure the car’s styling and technical punch were worthy of the moniker?even automakers as storied and vast as GM have but a few truly iconic nameplates on the shelf. The 2014 C7 Corvette Stingray will launch in the second half of 2013, along with the Z51. Is it iconic? We’ll have to wait years to determine that, but it definitely looks promising. Damn promising.”

?Andrew Wendler, Car & Driver 

“I kept finding myself drawn to the rear end of the car. I can see some Lexus LFA back there, and the four evenly spaced pipes that sort of mimic and make up for the loss of the four round, signature taillights. I heard some people express consternation that the new Corvette’s nose looks like the Viper, to which I?ve been answering, ?Yeah, but the new Viper looks like the old C6.? The most important thing to realize is that most of styling decisions were based on the C6.R racecar. Form following function is hardly a bad thing.

“I’m glad they brought back the Stingray moniker, but Chevy needs to stop claiming that they only apply Stingray to ‘special Corvettes.? The 1976 L-48 engined Stingray with its whopping 180 hp simply won’t fade away. That said, the new C7 Stingray will help bury the memory of bad Corvettes like that deeper and deeper. Looks like Chevy has a real winner on its hands. Here’s hoping the driving experience lives up to all the hype.”

?Jonny Liebermann, Motor Trend

“We expected to have some trouble wrapping our heads around the Stingray’s rear end treatment, and we have ? but not for the reason you might think. The tailllamp array is a bold departure from tradition, but the indirect lighting and deep-mounted fixtures are compelling, and the functional vents that surround them are unique. It’s the prominent center-mount exhaust outlets that we’re having a bit of trouble wrapping our head around. We’d like to see what the rear end looks like with squared-off outlets that mimic the taillamps, as right now, the exhausts are the only circular element on the entire back graphic of the car, and that strikes us a bit odd. Maybe for the eventual Z06 or ZR1?”

?Chris Paukert, Autoblog.com

“GM laid bare to us the C7 and all of its guts, and it is impressive. With the C7 Corvette it is clear that GM is bullish about addressing the Corvette’s shortcomings while enhancing the attributes that make fanboys out of grown men and women. It’s not a new formula, but it works.”

?Jason Kavanagh, Edmunds.com

“Go faster and use less gas. Be more comfortable and potent on the track. Run with Porsches, Ferraris and Aston Martins–for thousands less. Do it in a car whose technology is ne plus ultra, with All-American Badass attitude. 

That’s the 2014 Corvette you see here–worthy of being christened Stingray for the first time in more than 25 years–the n
ame was last used on the 1976 Corvette.”

?Dale Jewett, Autoweek.com

“The seventh-generation Corvette advances America’s sports car with a more aggressive aesthetic, more advanced technologies, more power, and a more fitting cockpit. But the most exciting prospect of the C7 is something very familiar. When we look at the new Corvette, we get the same feeling as when we see a ’63-’67 Sting Ray: we want to drive it.”

?Eric Tingwall, Automobile Magazine