The E-Ray was an important launch for Corvette, so important people made it to Goodwood - time to meet them
, so there’s a mid-engined Corvette to compete - in right-hand drive format, with dealers established and more coming. While offering an all-wheel drive Corvette with a dual-clutch transmission and a whiff of electric range is resolutely contemporary, don’t forget the V8.
As every comparable rival must take forced induction of some kind, the combination of hybrid boost with the 6.2 LT2 V8 looks mighty persuasive. The alliance yields 655hp; just 10 behind the Aston Martin Vantage, far beyond the 911 GTS at 541hp and even a mite more than theAnd at £150k, too. Hardly a bargain basement muscle car for a new generation, but most certainly competitive against the rest. An E-Ray comes with standard ceramic brakes too, which are never a cheap option. An AMG GT with a battery pack is £200k; add PCCBand nothing else and you have a £146,987 Porsche 911. So the Corvette has to be in the conversation. Indeed, it was with conversation in mind that execs were dispatched to Goodwood to talk about the newcomer. Pere Brugal is GM Europe’s MD and President, while Tony Roma is Corvette’s executive chief engineer - he took over from Zora Duntov decades ago, lent a hand in making the V Series Cadillacs awesome, and is now heading up Corvette giant-killing. Both are really interesting to spend a few minutes with. Pere is aware that Corvette needs more of a presence in the UK, and more support; the launch of right-hand drive Corvettes here has been topsy-turvy, and for now there are just four dealers: in Shrewsbury, Altrincham, Birmingham and Glasgow. “We know we are just starting on dealers”, he says, promising more but adding that “there isn’t a target number” for the amount of franchises in the UK . “We’ll see how the market reacts; the goal is aftersales for now”, the impression being that keeping those folk who have invested happy is just as important, if not more so, than luring in people nationwide. For what it’s worth, an E-Ray is covered by a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty, and an eight-year, 100,000-miler on the battery side. Pere adds that, while it looks like perfect product planning to add the electrified car to the line-up right now, it was always the intention for the UK to get a three-model portfolio of the Stingray, E-Ray and Z06. “GM has invested heavily over the past five years in traditional V8 engines and also on EV technologies and platform”, says Pere, “it felt natural to bring them both together.” The hybrid resurgence over here must help as well. He expects a few more E-Rays to be sold here as a proportion of all the Corvettes than in other markets, though there aren’t any concrete predictions for now. How can there be with such a new kind of Corvette? He knows volumes will be small, but with Cadillac selling EVs under the GM umbrella there ought to be enough V8s available to satisfy demand. And that must be a good thing. His colleague Tony Roma is a proper petrolhead, and it’s hard not to be optimistic about the future of Corvettes with him at the wheel. We spend far too much of that chat talking about the Nurburgring; yours truly remains obsessed with the place, and he’s fresh from a VT2 Front class victory at N24. “It’s my favourite race in the whole world, which is why it was on my bucket list to race it.” Victory has come at the third time of asking, and in a Cupra Leon of all things. Tony is already signed up with his teammates for next year to defend their title. And no, there won’t be an E-Ray lap time coming any time soon - there are faster Corvettes to take that task on in due course. Imagine the slam dunk if a ZR1 or ZR1X can lap faster than aThe carbon wheels seen on the Goodwood car are a subject of discussion. They will be an option for UK cars, along with a whole host of personalisation features; Tony reckons on their own the rims could be worth a second a lap. They reduce unsprung mass by something like 50lbs and “transform” the car, with better ride and the handling benefit from so much less rotational inertia. “We sell about as many as Carbon Revolution can make at the moment”, he reckons, with about 15 per cent of US customers going for them. They’d surely be the ideal accompaniment to those ceramic rotors for the ultimate in unsprung gains… For the moment, Tony suggests that there are no plans to introduce a plug-in element to the electrified Corvette offering. Not until there’s a bigger battery, at least. “It’s a lot of work to do plug in, a lot more safety and regulatory stuff to do PHEV”. Interestingly, he adds that he knows of customers with cars like SF90s who “plug in their hybrid system like you’d plug in battery tender on a normal battery; just to help keep the car alive”. There doesn’t seem very much point in that at all. comes up in discussion, somewhat inevitably, because Tony Roma is Corvette’s executive chief engineer and that’s a 1,250hp hypercar killer. Notably it has more power from a higher operating voltage while using the same 1.9kWh battery: 186hp and 145lb ft are 26hp and 20lb ft more than found in this E-Ray. Even he said the question about that setup’s future was obvious. “Absolutely. Stay tuned on that. Not for ‘25 or ‘26, but some day in the future.” So it’s safe to say there’s going to be more right-hand drive Corvette news coming in future runnings of the Festival of Speed. We’d say they can’t come soon enough.
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