[VIDEO] 2023 Chevy Bolt Races a 1999 Corvette and Goes One for Three

You don’t usually think of a budget EV running on a drag strip, but that’s what the guys at The Fast Lane recently did just for giggles.

The internal combustion dinosaurs out there may not like the comparison, but the Chevrolet Bolt EV actually wound up doing quite an admirable job against the old-school gasoline-powered V8 in a 1999 Corvette coupe. The Bolt EV, by the way, starts out in 2023 for a meager $26,500 (not to mention a $7,500 tax credit), while the 40,000-mile Corvette was purchased for $14,000.

Based on numbers alone, you’d think the ‘Vette with its 345-horsepower and 350 lb/ft of torque would make mincemeat out of the electrified Bolt EV with its paltry 200 horsepower and 266 lb/ft of torque.

But don’t count your chickens yet, as they say.

The competition consisted of a quarter-mile run, then two runs from a rolling start before winding down the action with a braking test from 60 mph.

In the quarter, the two cars were pretty close through 30 mph, but then the Corvette pulled away for a slight win – running a 15.44 at 98 mph to the Bolt’s 15.80 at 91 mph. “I can’t shake him,” the C5 driver admits at one point in the race. “He’s still behind me, but not by much.”

The rolling races featured the two cars hitting a steady 30 mph before stomping the accelerator to see who would cross the finish line first. The Corvette was hindered by its old-school 4L60-E automatic transmission that caused it to lose quite a bit on the downshift, and the Bolt actually took the win in the first run.

On the rematch, however, the C5 locked in first gear before manually shifting and didn’t lose anything on the downshift, winning by a significant margin as a result.

The braking results came as no surprise, with the lighter and more performance-oriented Corvette stopping a lot quicker from 60 mph than the much heavier and thin-tired Bolt, 112 feet to 126 feet.

In summary, the C5 proved to be the champ, but the Bolt EV didn’t shame itself.

As The Fast Lane summed it up: “It’s amazing what age and high elevation (the races were run at 5500 feet elevation) will do to performance, but you’ve also got to consider the automatic transmission, drivetrain losses. And electric cars are just so much more efficient considering not only the amount of energy per kw/h vs gallons but also the amount of energy it can deliver to the ground in a small package. Really impressive what the Bolt can do, especially considering the fact that it wasn’t really designed to drag race. It wasn’t designed for racing at all – it was designed to be very affordable.”

Source:
The Fast Lane Car / YouTube via autoevolution.com

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