Quote:
Originally Posted by heavyD^2
That said there's little doubt in my mind in a couple of years GM will have a version of the C8 that will outperform the 911.
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That's highly unlikely.
Jim Mero, who's been in charge of chassis development for GM for 30+ years, and has been responsible for the C5, C6, and C7 chassis engineering, recently retired shortly before the C8s start their suspension development cycle. He went on multiple podcasts and interviews and dropped a few nuggets.
To summarize and paraphrase, he though that the Corvette was already beating almost ALL of their mid and rear engine competitors handily, that when GM decided to move the Corvette to a mid engine layout he didn't think the mid engine is going to really challenge for handling supremacy. He had openly questioned the rationale for the C8 to go mid engine, until someone from GM probably told him to STFU and he had to back track.
I think, by GM going mid engine on the C8, the fruit of that labor won't really show up until 2-3 generations later. Corvettes up to C7 has had 50+ years of research and development to nearly perfect the front engine, rear wheel drive layout, to a point where it's winning the battle in most of the areas that count wrt performance, against not only FE-RWD competition, but against ME, RE, RWD and AWD competitions on and off the track. Now the coin has been flipped, that they're starting with a brand new slate on a brand new layout, against companies and teams that has had more than half a century to perfect their existing platform. That's a HUGE step back, all the knowledge gained on how to squeeze out that last ounce of performance out of a FE-RWD car is dumped in favor of ME-RWD, that's why you're seeing a HUGE step back in a wide swath of performance metrics (lateral grip, figure 8, braking, etc are all worse than C7 despite using a much more advanced rubber) except for straight-line acceleration.
I think it's going to take until the C10 (not the truck) generation Corvette until they can make the mid engine formula outcompete Porsche in most of its performance categories, and frankly, by that time, it's going to be likely a battle of electric motors and battery capacity, not V8 vs Boxster 6.