[VIDEO] Is the C8 Corvette’s Forward Visibility Worse than the C7 Corvette as Car and Driver Claims?

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[VIDEO] Is the C8 Corvette's Forward Visibility Worse than the C7 Corvette as Car and Driver Claims?


In the roll-out of reviews and features this week on the 2020 Corvette Stingray came this article from Car and Driver that makes the claim that the C8 Corvette’s forward visibility is actually worse than the front-engine C7s.

The magazine employs a specialized “50-year old contrivance” known as an H-Point Machine (HPM) that measures such information. The HPM is manufactured and sold by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and Car and Driver shared this article about how the H-Point Machine tests were conducted.

In their tests with the C8 Corvette, the front visibility on the C8 increases to 15 feet vs the 12 feet in the C7 Corvette. Things improve for the C8 Corvette when looking out the back, however, it’s not stated whether the rear vision camera was employed (which we believe it was) or if they measured with the regular rearview mirror. When looking rearward, the C8 Corvette’s rear visibility is 97 feet vs the 253 feet in the C7 Corvette.

Supporting their tests in the article are these two graphics:

Car and Driver


Car and Driver

Photo Credit: Car and Driver


But that’s counter to what we’ve been told by the Corvette Team that moving the seats forward of the car’s center of gravity automatically improves the forward visibility, and anecdotal evidence suggests that’s the case (however I have only sat in the car and haven’t driven it).

In this presentation from the NCM’s 25th Anniversary Celebration in August, a portion of it discusses just this topic. Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter doesn’t use these same measurements as Car and Driver, but he discusses visibility with this graphic which features a driver’s sight-lines and what he calls the angle of down vision.


So two different opinions both based on scientific measurements and in the end, it will come down to the perception of the drivers and whether or not they see more or less of the road behind the wheel of 2020 Corvette.

The Car and Driver article does mention that one reason why Chevy’s designers didn’t take more advantage of shrinking the front end down could be due to the rumored hybrid set-up coming later which features electric motors on the front of the car.


Source:
Car and Driver

Related:
The 2020 Corvette Stingray Takes Down the 2020 Porsche 911 Carrera S in First Comparison Test
Here’s Your List of Magazines and Websites with Reviews of the 2020 Corvette Stingray
Motor Trend: 2020 Corvette Stingray Z51 Runs 0-60 in 2.8 Seconds; Quarter Mile in 11.1 @ 123.2 MPH

 



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12 COMMENTS

  1. My god!!! who friggen cares, come on R&T get it together. What a stupid waste of time.

  2. Style +
    Comfort+
    Looks+
    Engineering+
    Tracking ability+
    Cost+
    Bang for the buck++
    Resale problem a plus+

    And we go for a study that says we can’t see 3 feet closer than the previous car….I’m sure Porcha would like that.

  3. Should any of us be surprised? These a$$es that write for C&D and R&T have never given the Corvette a good review without tearing it down usually at the interior. Chevrolet could put Porsche or Ferrari emblems on the C8 and the rags would deem it the greatest thing since buttered bread.

  4. As I see it both C&D make valid points, one refers to a standardized test procedure (SAE) and the other more based on archived objectives (Juechter). Look at how much better the C8 is than C7 overall, that is what matters most.

  5. Car and driver worse car magazine ever . Always trying to find away to put the corvette down. Every generation they find some ridiculous comparison or something negative. Why dont you guys just become a European car magazine. Oh and yes all the foriegn cars are so perfect right please . Get people who know about cars to write a fair article .

  6. It’s C&D not R&T folks. C&D has writers we can trust like Don Sherman, and they’re using a system that’s been around long enough to be checked by hundreds of engineers, and they explained exactly how they used this system.

    R&T is a complete joke/waste of time. It’s lead author is Sam Smith who knows absolutely nothing about cars and writes like a millennial blogger all about himself, every aspect of his own life, instead. His car “tests” are empty of reviews facts, and full of his diary-entries that occurred whilst somewhere near the tested car. “I had a great cup of coffee while I sat near this Lambo” … “My new best friend talked to me about avocado toast while he walked past this GT2RS” … “we saw this broadway show and had drinks with the star while the Bugatti was in the parking garage 2 miles away”…

    Check out the YT video of him asserting straight-faced that the 718 is “twin-turbo”, and nowhere on the official R&T video is that corrected. The absolute lowest R&T ever went was when Sam Smith filled 12 pages of a sports/racing car mag with a heart-warming (yuk!) story about his kindergarten-age daughter having a daddy-day in a freakn 2CV !!! In Road and TRACK!

    So yeah, if R&T had a problem with the C8 that wouldn’t matter at all. But C&D having a problem which they clearly laid out in technical descriptions, that’s a proper problem that needs looking at.

  7. Anyone that thinks that all Corvette made after 1967 has some issues. If I had a pre-1968 corvette the first thing I would do is sell it and buy a new one.

  8. Hard to understand how moving the driver forward and lowering the hood height would result in a longer, rather than a shorter, view distance to the front. Did C&D have the C8 driver’s seat height set in the lowest possible position and the C7 driver’s seat height set in the highest possible position?

  9. I had a 77 corvette it looked nice but was garbage no power at that time they killed even the Cadillac which was know for high class never to regain status it had

  10. I lost all confidence in Car and Driver after reading their anniversary issue where writers, past and present, that admitted they made up much of what they wrote without actually doing the research and work needed to make a factual review. They even joked about it. Want to know how the visibility is, drive it.

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