The Corvette has always stood as a symbol of attainable American sports car values. It’s got a roaring V8, lots of bare-chested torque, and handling that can compete with the Yurpeens for a lot less green. And since the C5 generation at least, it’s been able to do that while sucking down less of the dino juice than you might expect a big shouty American sports car to do. Even using largely the same engine as it did at the end of C7 production, the new mid-engine C8 Corvette somehow gets worse fuel mileage.
Way back in 2013 the brand new 2014 C7 Corvette was rated at 17 mpg city and 29 mpg highway. That number was done with the 7-speed manual transmission, of course, as the automatic wasn’t available until the 2015 model year. Since then the fuel economy test has changed and the C7’s number was revised to 17 city/28 highway.
Friday afternoon [you know, the time of week when news comes out that people want buried] the new fuel numbers were released for the 2020 C8 Corvette. It turns out that the magic midship missile from Chevrolet is worse on fuel economy than the car it replaced. It must be the fault of the 8-speed automatic and the LT2’s extra 35 horsepower, because the C8 can only manage 15 mpg city and 27 mpg highway.
Chevrolet Chief Engineer Ed Piatek broke this information to Motor 1 during an interview ahead of the Daytona 24 this weekend. Friend of Jalopnik, Bozi Tatarevic, was also in attendance, confirming that the new C8 Corvette would be given a fuel tank large enough to facilitate 500 miles of range. Doing that math, it works out to about a 19 gallon fuel tank in the front trunk.
In this year of our Lord 2020, 15 miles per gallon shall not be considered acceptable.
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