Best American cars of all time - Chevrolet Corvette
Sports car or muscle cars, the Chevrolet Corvette is one of the best cars to come from the USA
The first Chevrolet Corvette was produced in 1953, a pretty two-seater sports car with a powerful engine under the bonnet. Compared to contemporary supercars, the Corvette has always been a bit of a bargain - and the more modern models have got some serious performance to back them up as well. In fact, our test of the 2021 Corvette Stingray confirmed its status as a drivers’ car that can outperform almost everything else in its price bracket – and there’s an even more hardcore Corvette ZR1 on the way.
You don’t buy a car like this unless you like to be noticed, so the Corvette Stingray is unashamedly brash to look at. That said, the current-generation Stingray, aka the C8, is a huge departure from its ancestors. This is largely down to the engine being mounted in the middle of the chassis rather than at the front.
![2020 Chevrolet Corvette - front](https://media.autoexpress.co.uk/image/private/s--Acs2YdMA--/f_auto,t_content-image-mobile@1/v1571400274/autoexpress/2019/10/2020-chevrolet-corvette-stingray-004.jpg)
Chevrolet hasn’t radically changed the engine, though – it is a 6.2-litre V8 similar to the one in the last model, although it now has a dry sump unit like many of Europe's more exotic performance cars. All C8s come with an automatic gearbox and send power to the rear wheels – on the subject of which a C8 produces a rather sizeable 495bhp. If that doesn’t sound like enough, the new Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray produces an eye-watering 646bhp thanks to its electrically-assisted V8 motor under the bonnet.