Corvette E-Ray Hangs With McLaren 750S in Latest U-Drag Showdown

The Corvette E-Ray stays pretty close to the more powerful and lighter 750S even though it costs roughly one-third as much.

Since its debut, the C8 Corvette, in general, has been compared to pretty much every supercar, hypercar, and exotic piece of machinery out there, mainly due to GM’s decision to transform the iconic model into a mid-engine format. The Corvette has impressed in every one of those tests, proving that it’s more than capable of maintaining its reputation of providing a superior performance to dollar ratio. Now that the new Corvette E-Ray is hitting the streets, we’re once again seeing this mantra put to the test – starting with this Edmunds U-Drag race between the first-ever hybrid Corvette and the McLaren 750S.

As most are well aware by now, the Corvette E-Ray combines the Stingray’s LT2 V8 with an electric motor located up front to produce a combined 655 horsepower and 595 pound-feet of torque, though it has a hefty 3,942 pounds to move around – good for a weight to power ratio of 6.02 pounds per horsepower. The McLaren 750S, on the other hand, is equipped with a twin turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 generating 740 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque, and weighs 3,186 pounds – making for a far superior 4.31 horsepower to pound weight ratio. Of course, the Corvette E-Ray costs around a third of what McLaren asks for the 750S, too – $148k versus $449k in this case, as tested.

As interesting as these figures are, it’s how these two cars perform in the real world that really matters. In the case of Edmunds’ U-Drag race, both start out with a classic quarter-mile drag race, though each then turns around at the conclusion of that mark, making a u-turn, and racing back to the start. Edmunds switches drivers and lanes to even things out and eliminate any potential variables that might taint these results, too.

In that regard, the Corvette E-Ray actually manages to out accelerate the 750S to 60 mph, hitting that mark in 2.8 seconds versus 2.9, but the McLaren reaches the quarter-mile first in just 9.9 seconds at 146 mph, while the E-Ray was close behind at 10.5 seconds at 130 mph. The 750S also takes the max cornering test at 1.51 g versus 1.41, and it completes the entire U-Drag in 29.6 seconds at 154 mph compared to the E-Ray’s 31.7 seconds at 136 mph.

It’s an incredibly close result by any measure, meaning that even though the Corvette E-Ray lost this race, it was close enough to make things quite interesting. Even more impressive is the fact that both of these cars cracked the top 10 in terms of Edmunds’ all-time U-Drag leaderboard, with the E-Ray just barely losing out to the Z06 – by a mere 0.4 seconds, in fact.

As one might imagine, this video conjured up quite an interesting conversation in the CorvetteForum forums as well, with most pointing to the fact that this is precisely the benefit of hybrid assist – it helps the Corvette E-Ray rocket off the line like few other cars can, though it also suffers a bit at the top end, just like pure EVs tend to do. Regardless, for the stoplight-to-stoplight mavens out there, it’s certainly a compelling option, regardless.

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