rather than shift for you. The shifts do get
noticeably stiffer (some might say harsher)
in manual mode, which we imagine is
meant to make the car feel sportier to
people who don’t know any better.
You won’t find time in the dampers,
either. The Corvette’s fourth-genera-
tion magnetic dampers are the stuff of
magic, keeping the car just as planted and
confident in the corners as the 911 while
providing huge advantages in ride quality.
You know, how most people drive.
In its default Tour driving mode, the
Corvette rides like a luxury sport sedan
while still handling like a mid-engine
sports car. In Sport mode, you’re roughly
where the 911’s default ride quality resides,
with more vertical motion and louder
impacts passed into the cabin. Go to Track
mode, and it’s pretty stiff, but even then
it’s never harsh. Even the worst craters
in the road are heard in the massive tires
more than they’re felt in your spine. The
Porsche may be a little quicker around a
track, but there’s no question which car
you’d rather drive home.
The Corvette allows far less engine and
road noise into the cabin than the 911.
There’s more noise from those big tires,
especially the front ones right next to your
feet, but you can have a whispered conver-
sation at 80 mph in the Corvette. You’ll
have to speak up a little in the Porsche.
It’s just one of the ways in which the
Corvette’s cabin is nicer than the 911’s, a
sentence we feared we’d never get to write.
The Corvette’s notoriously cheap mate-
rials, gaping panel gaps, and persistent
smell of glue have all been banished.
The previous Corvette generation
showed us Chevrolet could afford to give
the car both performance and a nice inte-
rior, but the C8 has skipped straight past
nice and into proper supercar territory.
The leather is the best we’ve seen and felt
in a Corvette by a wide margin, there’s no
cheap-looking hard plastic anywhere, and
the seats (midgrade GT2s, in this case)
strike a balance between comfort and
lateral support that even some supercar
builders don’t get right.
Granted, our Corvette was a top-shelf
3LT trim level with the best interior you
can yet buy for the car, but you can do that
when the as-tested price is a Silverado
less than the 911—which had zero interior
dress-up options, at that. Sure, Porsche
will wrap the air vent blades in leather if
you put enough zeros on the check, but
out of the box, it’s a stark field of dark grays
and blacks all finished in varying grades of
plastic and piano black. Our Carrera didn’t
even have power seats.
We also found the Corvette’s controls
more intuitively laid out, though we didappreciate the Porsche’s programmable
hot keys on the dash and steering wheel.
The Corvette’s infotainment system is less
cluttered and layered, and it’s easier to
operate while the car is in motion.
The Corvette’s highly customizable
digital dash and the bits of theater
provided by the transitions between
screens won many points over the 911’s
pair of screens—which flank the analog
tachometer and are absurdly obscured by
the steering wheel. The Corvette’s squircle
steering wheel might take a little getting
used to, but it affords a clear view of all the
information on the instrument cluster.
On more practical, everyday matters, the
cars are more evenly split. The Corvette’s
geo-tagged nose lift feature is a must-
have and works perfectly to save the chin
spoiler. On the other hand, the ’Vette has
massive blind spots when you look over
either shoulder, and the rear window is
small. Some of this is mitigated by the best
implementation yet of a video rearview
mirror, if you don’t find it too distracting.
But in any direction but forward, the 911 is
simply easier to see out of.
The Porsche is also better when you
need to put things in it. It may not sound
like a lot of extra space, but the way the
Porsche’s 0.7-cubic-foot advantage is
shaped means a medium-sized spinner
suitcase can fit in the frunk; the Corvette
can barely fit a carry-on up front. With its46 MOTORTREND.COM FEBRUARY 2020
COMPARISON TEST