Over four decades of driving, averaging 32,000 miles annually by my conservative estimate, I have accumulated enough traffic fines and penalties to pay for a full year at a good state college.Mentally, I have succumbed to the weight of the law and have yielded to the sobering knowledge that stupidity behind the wheel can lead to death or other serious injury. I have witnessed many traffic fatalities worldwide. Thankfully, I was involved in none of them.
I have, at 65 years of age, matured. But I still indulge my fascination with speed whenever safely and legally possible, which is why this week’s column is personal cause for celebration.
Welcome the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray Coupe, now officially the “Corvette Stingray,” the Stingray name resurrected from the 1963-68 era of the C2 Corvette Stingray automobile.
In attitude and performance, it is an appropriate reuse of nomenclature. But anyone who has been brutalized by the C2 Corvette Stingray, especially driving over less-than-perfect roads, will not confuse the new car with its predecessor. By comparison, the 2014 Corvette Stingray has a sophistication and finesse once thought exclusively resident in cars European and prohibitively expensive.
That is not hyperbole.
I had my choice of prototype and production Stingray models here during a Chevrolet event connected with the 63rd running of the Pebble Beach Concours d’ Elegance. I settled on and stayed in the car probably most of us will buy and drive — the gasoline-fueled, 6.2-liter V-8 coupe (455 horsepower, 460 pound-feet of torque) equipped with an optional six-speed automatic transmission.
A seven-speed manual transmission is standard. But it remains to be seen if that will be the transmission of choice for the demographic group most capable of affording the new Stingray’s $51,000 entry price. Buyers with that kind of discretionary income tend to be older. Older drivers, according to currently available industry data on consumer transmission choices, tend to prefer automatics.
