Corvette E-Ray is a cut-price supercar in which you don’t get what you don’t pay for

At less than half the price of a Ferrari, the Corvette E-Ray looks incredible on paper. So why do I feel like this American beast is to Italian supercars what Domino’s is to pizza?

Stephen Corby

The fast and powerful E-Ray has both a shouty V8 engine and an electric motor, and all-wheel drive. Picture: Supplied

3 min read

10:02AMJuly 10, 2025

The Weekend Australian Magazine

I rarely read the work of other motoring journalists because I find their insistence on banging on constantly about cars – rather than what it’s like getting naked in a Japanese onsen, or how much they hate jazz – drainingly dull. Most of them are also spectacularly wrong about everything, by which I mean that they disagree with me.

Quite often, however, I am stuck at dinner tables with them and thus forced to hear about cars that excite them. Recently there’s been a lot of frothing about the new Corvette.

This mad muscle car brand has long maintained a mythic status among enthusiasts, largely because its cars look fantastic and yet for a long time we couldn’t drive them in Australia due to the inconvenient positioning of the steering wheel. Today, however, Australians can choose between a $175,000 entry-level Corvette Stingray; the range-topping, rear-wheel-drive widowmaker Z06, at $336,000; or, confusingly, the faster and more powerful E-Ray, which has both a shouty V8 engine and an electric motor, and all-wheel drive, and costs $275,000.

Theoretically, these violent ’Vettes compete with exotic supercars from Italy, and there has been much journo jibber about how these new ones are as beautiful as Ferraris to look at and as loudly exciting as Lamborghinis to drive.

Corvette has placed its thumping 6.2-litre V8 where it belongs in a supercar – right behind the driver’s ears. Picture: Supplied

Let’s start with the reasons they might be right, like the fact that, for the first time, this Corvette has placed its thumping 6.2-litre V8 where it belongs in a supercar – right behind the driver’s ears, providing mid-engined balance and the opportunity to stare at it through the rear glass hatch (they’ve painted it bright red, so it looks like a Transformer’s gleaming heart).

The E-Ray version I was given also apes the clever hybrid set-up of the world’s greatest supercar, the Ferrari 296 GTB, which allows it to send 369kW and 637Nm from the engine to the rear wheels and another 119kW and 169Nm from its electric motor to the front ones for a combined 488kW and 806Nm. All that grunt allows it to hit 100km/h in 2.9 seconds, exactly the same as the fabulous Ferrari and at less than half the price. That all looks good on paper, but in the flesh I’m afraid the Corvette is to Italian supercars what Domino’s is to pizza.

For a start, the steering wheel is square, like a pizza box, and attached to what is the single worst thing about the car – the shift paddles. Sure, on most cars these paddles are used about as often as that DVD player you haven’t gotten around to throwing out yet, but in a performance car like this, driving enthusiasts are likely to want to play with them.

The bright blue interior of my car looked like a mermaid’s lungs. Picture: Supplied

In the Corvette, this is particularly worth doing because it allows you to stretch the engine into its higher revs and more expressive octaves, which, once you’ve selected Track mode for maximum volume, is the kind of aural experience that makes you want to buy a time machine so you can go back and un-invent electric cars. It’s glorious.

What’s less of an eargasm are the underwhelming plastic clicks the paddles make when you use them. It sounds as exciting as pressing the buttons on an ATM, only to find you have no money to withdraw, and the tactile feel of them is equally unthrilling. Proper supercar companies know this is important – Lamborghini’s shift paddles feel like samurai sword blades, while Ferrari’s ones seem borrowed from an F1 car. The Corvette’s are more like Paddle Pop sticks than paddle shifters, and they bring down the whole car, which is a shame, because the E-Ray version really is impressive, and far better to drive than I would have thought possible. The steering is pointy, the ride impressive and the thunderous engine as thrusty as it is thirsty (with a full 70-litre tank, I was looking at 440km of range).

There’s much that I liked about the Corvette E-Ray but much that upset me as well. Picture: Supplied

While the rear-wheel-drive Z06 is apparently hairy-handed to drive, particularly if it’s raining, the E-Ray felt controllable and encouraging in all conditions (it’s also the first Corvette ever to have AWD, and no doubt annoys purists for that reason).

The other unfortunate thing about the Corvette, of course, is that it’s not just an American pizza, it’s an extra cheesy one. The bright blue interior of my car looked like a mermaid’s lungs, and while the nose of the car is impressive, the exterior design turns into a squared-off tank at the rear.

Then there’s the removable roof, which involves some serious faffing around, and the removal of at least two fingernails. When it’s off, it’s lovely, but when it’s on you can hear it creaking, or at least I think that’s what it was. As a piece of design it would feel more at home on a Jeep Wrangler.

There’s much that I liked about the Corvette E-Ray – driving it, mainly, although I had to leave it in Automatic and avoid the paddles – but much that upset me as well. It might be a lot cheaper than a proper Italian supercar, but you really don’t get what you don’t pay for.