[VIDEO] The 2024 Corvette E-Ray Gets the MotorWeek Treatment

Oct 25, 2024

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[VIDEO] The 2024 Corvette E-Ray gets the MotorWeek Treatment

Last month, as the Top Gear/Grand Tour trio rides into the sunset after just 22 years on television and streaming, John Davis and PBS’ MotorWeek have quietly kicked off their 44th season of vehicular education and entertainment!

John and his signature presenting style are back in front of the camera for episode 44.1 of the show that he created in 1981, and what better way to venture into a post-Clarkson, Hammond, and May automotive media landscape than with a 655-horsepower Corvette unlike any that came before it? Stunning in Riptide Blue over Tension/Twilight Blue, the Hybrid AWD Corvette E-Ray is in Owings Mills, Maryland, to bend minds!

Before we get to its performance, it’s pretty compelling to ponder how far America’s Sports Car has come since MW’s impressive run began. In 1981, the Corvette lineup featured a single model, the C3 coupe, which was in its 13th year of production. Its 5.7L V8 made all of 190 horsepower and could only muster a 15.4-second quarter at 91 mph – to be fair, the contemporary Ferrari 308GTSi was only clocked at 15.6 @ 90 in a Car and Driver comparison test that year. Despite being so long-in-the-tooth and a lack of raw grunt that stands out as an aberration in Corvette history, the ’81 did extremely well from a sales perspective. An astounding 40,606 units were minted during this transition year that saw Bowling Green pick up the final 8,995 examples after St. Louis handled the lion’s share before going offline.

After four generations of improvement, the base Corvette’s V8 has grown slightly to 6.2L, but what it does with the extra displacement would absolutely floor anyone visiting from ’81. Horsepower is up 260% to 495, the engine is in the middle, and it can cover 1,320 feet in 11.2 seconds at 122 mph – improvements of 4.2 seconds (an eternity in ¼ mile ETs) and 31 mph! And, again, that’s just the base model in a lineup that now features four distinct tiers. The E-Ray at the heart of today’s video adds the Z06’s wider haunches and a 1.1-kWh battery that powers the front wheels to the formula. While Davis notes that they tested in non-ideal conditions of a humid 100-degree day, MW was able to rip off a 2.8-second sprint to 60 and an 11-flat quarter at 127 with the added traction of four driven wheels and the perma-torque of the e-motor.

It’s truly impressive stuff, and our favorite bit of any E-Ray review is when they remind us that the Corvette team was able to refrain from including a charging port and that the system recharges itself and can’t go empty, removing a great deal of the inconvenience of a present-day EV. Enjoy the clip for yourself, and as crazy as the world has become in recent years, take a moment to appreciate how far our favorite car has come since the 1980s!