Johnny Liberman, with MOTORTREND saidYou did what? I asked a friend who bought a Corvette with an automatic transmission. I know he had some excusetraffic, knee, he is a bad personbut I dont remember it. Who on earth would buy an automatic Corvette when there is a perfectly good row-your-own available? For less money, too. Here is the crazy part: Only 23 percent of the Corvettes sold in 2016 were manuals. SMH, as the kids say, though I guess I do live in a silicon dioxide-ceramic towerI barely ever see automatic Corvettes, let alone consider purchasing one. All this is a fancy preamble to explain that we tested a 2017 Corvette Grand Sport with an eight-speed automatic transmission. But fear not We also tested a manual Grand Sport. We are good like that.
For those not familiar with concept, the Grand Sport is to Corvette what GTS is to Porsche. Think about the 911 GTS, for example. You take most of the popular performance options from the Carrera S, throw in the wide body kit from the Turbo, and price it so that aftermarket mods would cost about twice as much. Meet the Grand Sport. You start with the Stingray version of the C7 with the Z51 option. Z51 means the snarling 460-horsepower, 465-lb-ft 6.2-liter V-8 has a dry oil sump. This pays off in the corners.
Lets get to it. In a straight line, the Grand Sport with the seven-speed manual (which also comes with the Z51's shorter gears) hits 60 mph in 3.9 seconds and runs across one quarter mile of tarmac in 12.2 seconds at 116.1 mph. Thats pretty good, though it should be noted that the slightly less powerful (455 hp, 455 lb-ft of torque) Camaro SS 1LE hits 60 mph in 4.0 seconds and does the quarter-mile dash in 12.4 seconds at 114.2 mph. The GS manual weighs 3,464 pounds, whereas the Camaro clocks in at 3,735 pounds. But start turning the wheel, and the Grand Sport records a maximum lateral acceleration number of 1.18 g. Thats the best we have ever recorded from a production vehicle. That 1LE Camaro pulls a 1.09, which is pretty good. But again, the Grand Sport has the most grip of any production car on earth.