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2008 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible - Design

It is very possible that 40 years from now this generation of Corvette will be looked upon with the same fondness and nostalgia that we have for the 60s-era coupes and convertibles. This is a beautifully styled car, with not a line out of place. The fenders swell over the wheels in the front and rear, but gently, not cartoonishly. The wheels themselves are perfect five-spokes, showing off the big cross-drilled brakes behind them. Those fender vents are real, and they glide into strakes along the flanks of the car that recall Corvettes of the past, but don’t copy them outright. In fact, the entire car is a study in the best way to keep a car’s heritage alive without resorting to retro styling gimmicks: The 2008 car is instantly recognizable as a Corvette, yet it doesn’t look anything like its classic predecessors.

The same is true of the interior. There are echoes of Corvettes past in the twin-cowl design, but it’s thoroughly modern inside. The gauges seem to float in midair at night, and that 200-mph upper limit on the speedometer isn’t far from the truth; Chevy predicts about 190 mph. The waterfall of body-color composite between the seats recalls the 50s Corvettes, when all of them were convertibles. The new leather on the dash and elsewhere dresses up the interior significantly, and we love the two-tone look.

Of course, that’s just what your eyeballs tell you. The day-to-day usefulness of the Corvette is another story, and surprisingly, it’s mostly a good one. We’ve already mentioned the comfortable ride and pussycat behavior the car displays in-town. We didn’t mention the interior storage space. There are useful door pockets, two cup holders hidden by a sliding door, and an ample center console bin that makes up for its shallowness by being quite long. The glovebox is small and largely taken up by the owner’s information package. For a commuter by herself it’s fine; for two people and their junk on a weekend, there’s enough space here to get by, but just barely.

Pop the trunk and you’ll find 11 cubic feet of storage space with the top up, and it’s long and flat enough to be useful as well. Throw in a couple sets of golf clubs for a day on the links, or a couple of overnight bags for a weekend getaway, and you’ll have room to spare. Top down it shrinks to 7.5 cubic feet, which isn’t great, but still good enough if you pack lightly. The only downside is the tremendously high liftover, since you need to clear the entire rear bumper cover before accessing the trunk. It also took a good hard slam to shut properly; it’s annoying, but something to which we quickly grew accustomed.

Ergonomics in the Corvette are well thought out for the most part, but there were a few switches scattered here and there that we thought were oddly placed. For example, the toggle to operate the power top was hidden behind the steering wheel, while the button for the traction control was on the center console; some of us thought they should be reversed. We did like the head-up display, and note that it’s the only way to see what gear you’re in when in the automatic’s manual mode, but we found ourselves fiddling with the brightness control more than expected. It also washes out completely in bright sunlight, and the housing itself is too often gracelessly reflected in the windshield.

It should come as no surprise that the Corvette is not the quietest car to come out of GM. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your point of view. We like the sounds the Corvette makes, and we suspect most people in the market for this car will agree that the roar of the V-8, the growl of the exhaust, and the rumble of the big tires on pavement is all part of the experience. On the other hand, there are times when you want to be alone with your thoughts, and those same sounds can get in the way of navel contemplation. Some of what we heard was a little disappointing, like the squeak of the driver’s door in its frame; it wasn’t constant, but it was clearly audible over harsher road surfaces.