While the engine is the beating heart of any vehicle and sports cars, in particular, are often focused on engine performance and power, with the 2020 Chevy Corvette, it goes even further. It is truly no exaggeration to say that the entire vehicle has been built around the engine – it is the foundation of everything else. Not only regarding the kind of power it can produce but also, naturally, its position within the vehicle.
We should take a moment to talk about that position and why it is so important. With a high-performance vehicle, a lot of time is spent on dealing with weight to give the car the best handling and balance possible. If you put the engine at the front of the vehicle, then you have a lot of weight up front, and you need to design around that. With a mid-engine design, all that weight is shifted toward the middle of the car, which makes it much easier to balance everything else. The position of the engine in the 2020 Corvette is just behind the cabin, above the rear wheels – creating fantastic balance and handling on the road.
That position is not all that matters – if you slapped any old engine there, it would offer great balance but little else. The engine in the 2020 Corvette, also called the C8, is an improvement of the engine in the previous generation, the C7. The new LT2 engine is a 6.2L V8 that can provide up to 490 hp and 465 lb-ft of torque with the standard setup. There is an available performance exhaust package that boosts those numbers up to 495 hp and 470 lb-ft of torque for a truly amazing driving experience.
That powerful engine comes paired with an 8-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, which gives it a 0 to 60 speed comparable with models and engines far more powerful. This is the only transmission currently available with the 2020 Chevy Corvette, and while some people might lament the loss of a manual option, there are paddle shifters on the steering wheel for some driver control. The precision and quick gear-shifting offered by the dual-clutch transmission cannot be denied, however, and it lets this new Corvette fly through the gears.