I drove 400 miles in a C8 Corvette Z51

Pictures: [https://imgur.com/a/lH06Blb](https://imgur.com/a/lH06Blb) A year ago I rented my childhood dream car R35 Nissan GT-R Black Edition for my birthday. I liked it so much I ended up buying one less than 6 months later. This year on my birthday I rented a C8 Corvette Z51. The big difference is I didn't have nearly as much enthusiasm for the C8 as I did the GT-R. I saw a C8 pre production car in person and always felt the design was a bit off for a corvette. Even once they started landing and now you see them everywhere. I never quite warmed up to it. I was mostly renting it out of curiosity and also to see if it'd make me excited for the Z06. The corvette I rented was a 2022 and just had the Z51 package without MagRide. It had a very low rent interior, tons of plastics, which really was the most corvette thing about it. The corvette configurator puts it at around a $73k MSRP with destination. I drove 400 miles over two days in the C8 doing all kinds of driving but, mostly spirited driving as reflected in my 14 MPG Average. The C8 is an amazing car. As a platform it blew me away. It was way more approachable that I expected. There's so much grip and it's so neutral feeling coming into and out of corners. I'd run the same corners over and over again sometimes bringing it a bit more speed or getting on the power a bit earlier coming out of corners. It never seemed bothered. All while making me feel like I was totally in control. I couldn't comfortably push this car anymore than I did. I just kept wanting to drive it and explore its behavior. I had no complaints with Z51 suspension, I really enjoyed the seating position, and front end visibility. The transmission is very fast and seamless. I could easily drive it everyday. There's some parts of the car that felt disconnected. I didn't really feel the presence of the engine and the disconnected feel is only made worse by the engine sound playing through the speakers. Outside of the cabin the exhaust sounds glorious which is a shame because I hear almost none of it inside the car. The steering is very quick and the car is eager to respond but, in most driving situations it's very numb and doesn't feel like it's connected to the front end. The Sport and Track modes for the steering were too artificially heavy all the time. I left the steering in Tour mode even though it's "drive with your pinky" light, at least it got slightly heavier as you loaded it up in corners. The C8 Z51 does make me excited to maybe one day drive a Z06 but, unless the engine is more present in the driving experience, the C8 Z51 has all the cornering performance I could use as a street car at $40k MSRP less. It's also no slouch in a straight line. Without Launch control I managed a best 0-60 mph time of 3.6 seconds by easing into the gas and manually pulling the paddles. With the extra cash over a Z06, I'd be curious to see what a cammed C8 with some stiffer motor mounts sounds and feels like. I don't have a ton of seat time in anything comparable to the C8 but, comparing it to my GT-R. The GT-R feels a lot faster in a straight line but, not as composed in the corners. I'd have a lot more understeer or oversteer trying to emulate the C8. Which really shocked me considering cornering performance is what impressed me on my drive with the GT-R a year ago but, that could be due to the nearly 5 year old Bridgestone RE070R tires on my GT-R vs the new Michelin PS4S on the C8. On equal tires I'm sure it'd be a different story. The GT-R has much better steering feel and weighting. It is also much more raw and visceral; there's significantly more NVH in the GT-R but, they both have rattly interiors. Considering the C8s starting MSRP, it definitely takes a page out of the GT-Rs handbook of being a relatively attainable and everyday super sports car. I was really surprised how much I ended up liking the C8, I thought I was someone who put a high emphasis on steering and mechanical feel but, it offers very little of that and I loved racking up miles in it. It's given me an existential crisis and made me wonder.. what do I really know about myself??