Not Everyone Loves the Sound of a Corvette
By Josh Sims
Tony Roma concedes that maybe not everyone loves the sound of a Corvette. “A lot of us [who work for the General Motors-owned automotive brand] live close to each other and while I personally don’t find the engine sound annoying, I think my neighbours might,” chuckles Corvette’s executive chief engineer. “My wife hears a distant Corvette and says it’s like one of my children calling”.
Well, not so much now. Corvette is set to make a big splash later this year with the launch in Europe not only of its first right-hand drive, all-wheel drive car but, more importantly, its’s first hybrid car - complete with a ‘stealth mode’ that allows drivers to leave home without announcing the fact to the entire neighbourhood. Enter the Corvette E-Ray - which was unveiled at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed and delivers in September - part 1.9kWh regenerative battery (no plugging in to charge), part raucous V8 engine, and able to shift this descendant of the famed Stingray from 0 to 62mph in 2.9 seconds. Hold on very tightly.
Much as the Stingray - arguably the single most famous car in American automotive history - had, for a while, that signature split screen rear window, so the E-Ray has plenty of details that are very Corvette too: check out the angular lines over the bumpers, those tail-lights or the central four-port exhaust - all signatures for Corvette in the modern era. And yet…a hybrid engine? Really? In fact, at the high performance end of the car market, hybrid has recently undergone serious reappraisal, with McLaren, Ferrari and Lamborghini all having gone down this road - albeit with much heftier price tags. But, you know, isn’t hybrid neither a commitment to a full-blooded combustion engine, sustainability be damned, nor going for broke with all-electric, the powertrain of the future?
“When considering hybrid a lot of people still think about[taxi driver’s favourite, the] Toyota Prius and react with a ‘no, thanks, I’d like a Corvette please’,” says Roma, who prior to moving to Corvette helped drive the reinvention of Cadillac - another General Motors brand set to come to Europe. “But when the customer sees how hybrids have moved on and how they can be used intelligently - for much greater efficiency, for acceleration, for handling - then the reaction tends to be very different. There’s still more open-mindedness towards hybrids in Europe than in the United States, more of a willingness to accept the technology and what it can do”.
And, adds Roma, while producing an all-electric Corvette is perhaps inevitable - Roma says there is a lot of discussion within the company about how to maintain the emotional connection to a car so loved for its sound - the fact is that all-electric still gives a mixed bag in performance terms. Finding a balance to the added weight of a battery-only powertrain against taking a hit to performance inset so easy yet. Batteries need to get much lighter.
Certainly balance is one of the key attributes of the E-Ray. Roma explains that, for him, one less appealing aspect of many performance cars these days is that too many of the driving decisions are co-opted by onboard computing, leaving the driving experience “video-gamey”, as he puts it. With the E-Ray effort has been made to dial that back - to give, as it were, a digital vehicle an analogue feel. And dialling it back is the phrase, given E-Ray drivers can tweak some knobs to fine-tune just how much they want to be in control. Since the founding of the company in 1953, Corvette has, after all, been regarded as very much a driver’s car - something underscored by Corvette’s very first victory at the European Le Mans Series’ Four Hours of Imola race this July.
That, Roma insists, is another challenge with going all-electric “What’s missing from [those cars] is that analogue decision-making,” he says. It’s not just the ability to control the car. Its more technical than that. “The very mass [of the battery] and the way the cars needs to regenerate power all the time betrays that analogue feeling,” he says.
Indeed, the E-Ray might be described as an exercise in finely-tuned trade-offs. “There’s this tight rope we walk, in that a Corvette has to be race-tack proven, because that’s part of what people buy into, but it also has to be comfortable when you just want to drive it to work,” says Roma - and, as a man who races himself, and who has put in over 1500 laps on the Nurburgring, Germany’s notoriously challenging racetrack, he knows of what he speaks. “It has to be credible, but it also work for the everyday”. Customers are given myriad options to find their own sweet spot.
And then there is the price. Those who place their E-Ray order now can expect to pay upwards of £153,440 (clearly Corvette is no fan of round numbers). Now Roma concedes this a lot of money. But he does argue that it’s a very fair price. Indeed, next year Corvette launches its ZR1X, a supercar - not just a performance car - that will underscore this ethos.
Roma calls it a “supercar for the masses”. Why so? Because, the ZR1X, also a hybrid, is going to give very brave drivers a huge 1,250 horsepower. “Look at all the other cars offering over 1000 horsepower now and they’re all $1m-plus,” he says. Given its huge parent company, Corvette’s ability to scale production of the non-performance parts of its vehicles - pushing down their prices and so allowing more of the target production cost to be ploughed into the high-tech performance elements - means the ZR1X will hit the market at around the same price as the E-Ray.
“So it’s going to reach a lot more people,” he enthuses. “Of course, these are not economy cars, but a hallmark of Corvette is value - you get a lot of tech for you money”. And, given this shift to hybrid, you get a 21st century car but, thankfully, still one you can wake the neighbours up with.