COLD FUSION

CORVETTE’S RADICAL MID-ENGINED RIGHT-HOOKER IS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW BUT CAN IT FACE DOWN THREE TALENTED EUROPEAN RIVALS?

-  ALEX INWOOD

IT BEGINS, as the best conversations tend to, over a bacon and egg roll. We’re gobbling breakfast in a small-town cafe, peering through the window at the swoops, curves and bright colours of the cars assembled for this group test when photographer Brook pops the question: “That Corvette… is it a muscle car, a sports car or a supercar?”

There’s a pause, some puzzled expressions, before we all talk at once.

“Definitely a muscle car; the Corvette has always been a muscle car.”

“But it’s mid-engined now. And look at it! It’s a proper wedge.

That’s a supercar!”

“Nah, it’s like a 911.

A sports car that can mix it with supercars.” It takes another 15 minutes, and some granular theorising – “isn’t a muscle car based on a regular production model?” – before we finally agree: GM has changed the recipe so radically for this C8 generation that it requires further exploration to properly pin it down. That’s job one for this comparison test.

The other cars are easier to wrap your head around. Well, mostly. The Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe and Audi RS5 are ubiquitous German performance coupes that are, essentially, European muscle cars. They certainly look like muscle cars, with their blistered guards, tough stances and sinister grey and green paint schemes. And in the case of the AMG, with its lumpy, wet sounding idle, it sounds like a proper muscle car, too.