A Year With Our 2027 Chevy Corvette Grand Sport Started With a 1,500-Mile Race Against Time

• What's new: The 2027 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport joins our One-Year Road Test fleet, and we'll cover 20,000 miles over the coming year. I drove it 1,500 miles in three days so it'd be ready for our date at the test track.
• Why it matters: The headline is Chevy's new 6.7-liter V8, but this year's Corvette also gets an interior redesign and the Grand Sport delivers Z06 looks and handling for less money. 
• Edmunds says: While the Grand Sport isn't the most fun supercar ever, its versatility is unmatched, and its whimsical persona makes it likable.

Flawed interior improvements

With keys in hand, the first 1,500 miles came and went in a flash because they needed to. While the call to collect the Grand Sport came in on a Friday, I was to have its 1,500-mile break-in completed and the car ready for track testing by Monday morning. A quick note on the process: For the first 500 miles, all of which should be gently driven at varied revs, the Corvette automatically caps your redline at 4,500 rpm. Once completed, the Corvette unlocks its 6,500-rpm redline. 

While that means you can start experiencing the full power of the Grand Sport's new 6.7-liter engine, "track events, sport driving schools, or similar activities" remain prohibited until you reach 1,500 miles. As such, I mounted a charge across California, splitting the run into three days, with most of the time spent off-highway to vary engine revs as much as possible. 

When you first drop into its bucket seats, the Corvette's cabin seems like an awkward space. You sit fairly high, the steering wheel is oddly squared off, and your elbows bump into the tall center console. Having lived with a Porsche 911 for the best part of the last decade, my impulse is always to keep my back straight and the wheel relatively close, an approach that guarantees a bad time in the Grand Sport. 

The key is to lean the seat back farther than you think, crank the thigh support all the way up, and push the wheel a decent bit away. What you end up with is a more conventional fixed bucket-seat feel that maximizes your headroom, supports you properly, and keeps your elbows from slamming into the center console. While it took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure this out, it eliminated all ergonomic discomfort for the remainder of my miles.

As with all Corvettes, the Grand Sport's A/C system blasts winds that would embarrass a Category 5 hurricane, instantly cooling the cabin on a triple-digit-degree day. If you want a reason to love American cars, their determination to instantly freeze over should be up there. Like the rest of the 2027 Corvette range, our GS gets a redesigned interior with a larger 12.7-inch infotainment display and a center console layout that doesn't leave you scrambling to find the right button, like you may have in 2020-2025 Corvettes. It's intuitive, looks far classier than the old setup, and tears down the wall that previously essentially split the cabin in two. 

Road trip time

Our Corvette became more endearing the more I drove it, something I learned across six hours of driving on day one and 12 hours on day two. It rides beautifully in its softest Tour mode, and despite the Grand Sport's wider 275/30/20 front and 345/25/21 rear tire sizes that mirror those of the Corvette Z06, Chevy chose Michelin Pilot Sport 4S rubber for this car's Z52 performance package instead of the maximum-attack Pilot Sport Cup 2 Rs you get in a perf-pack-equipped Z06. Compared to that car, our Grand Sport is relatively quiet at higher speeds. There's no excessive wind noise to speak of, and thanks to our lack of an upgraded exhaust, no agitating engine drone. 

I'd love to say it's so good at road tripping you forget it's a supercar, but that's not the case. Our car's Adrenaline Red leather interior reflects off the windshield, so your view out is always slightly tinged red. That's a solvable problem, but despite a tech suite that boasts three screens (the 12.7-inch display in the center, a 14-inch instrument cluster, and a 6.6-inch touchscreen to the left of the steering wheel), you can't get adaptive cruise control on any Corvette. That meant I kept having to disengage from my preferred cruising speed whenever a slower car crossed into my lane. 

Day three was another 10-hour day, and this one taught me less about how the Corvette drives and more about how it interacts with its environment. Setting off from Los Angeles and stopping at my favorite coffee shop on my way north, I began to pick up on the contempt with which people look at the Grand Sport. 

It's not exactly subtle. After all, it's a red, white and blue mid-engine car that barks into life with V8 noise and a choppy idle, but I don't think I've gotten nearly as many dirty looks when I've pulled up in any Ferrari, McLaren or Lamborghini built in the last five years. Perhaps it's that the Grand Sport doesn't shy away from what it is. It's a bright blue sports car covered in giant stickers. It's a bit silly, sure, but all great supercars should be. I did get a thumbs-up from a little boy on the way out, so I'm going to take that as a good sign. 

Finally fun: Track and canyon testing

Those 10 hours and the run to 1,500 miles flew by. I would've happily driven the Grand Sport across the country, but as Monday morning rolled around, it was time to test how much extra performance its new 6.7-liter engine packed over the outgoing 6.2-liter V8. The answer, which you can read more about here, is … not much. It proved no quicker than a Stingray and generated only slightly more grip on our 200-foot skidpad thanks to its wider tires, but it was otherwise underwhelming to test. 

Like all other Corvettes, the Grand Sport uses an electronic braking system (i.e., there's no physical connection between the brake pedal and the calipers), which means it's difficult to sense when you're about to trigger the ABS. The Grand Sport's steering, although very quick and precise, doesn't convey road-surface textures well. I wanted more communication from the car. It accelerated quickly — 535 horsepower is still a ton in a car like this — and its eight-speed dual-clutch rips shifts instantly, but our car's muted exhaust fails to create a strong sense of speed. It's all of the performance with none of the drama.

I drove the remaining 500 miles of my stint almost exclusively on canyon roads. It's here where the Grand Sport is at its happiest. With more power than you'd ever need, brakes that shed speed effortlessly and wide tires, the Corvette can keep up with just about anything on a twisty road. Away from the track, it doesn't matter as much that it's somewhat numb to drive because you're rarely reaching its grip or braking limits. If fast acceleration, burbly V8 noises, and supercar looks are what you're after, it delivers. 

What the Grand Sport lacks in driving tactility, it makes up for with incomparable versatility. It doesn't really matter if you have the "best" supercar on paper if its use case is so limited that you never drive it. Throughout my 2,000-mile introductory run in the latest member of our One-Year Road Test fleet, there was never a reason not to drive the Grand Sport. It rides well, it's comfortable, it has a huge trunk, and it's supercar-quick. Plus, while not conventionally pretty, it's still worthy of a poster on the wall — or, more accurately, the wallpaper on your phone.

We would do well by paying less attention to the people who scoff at this sticker-clad Corvette and more to the kids whose eyes light up when they see it. A supercar is an inherently unserious thing, and while the Grand Sport isn't the finest-driving instrument ever, it's likable. That's more than I can say of the current crop of V6-powered plug-in hybrid exotic supercars. It's not that 2,000 miles erase its many flaws; they just stop mattering. 

For the $112,605 we paid, the Corvette Grand Sport is without rivals. A base Porsche 911 now starts at $137,850, which is certainly a way to spend that kind of money, while every other supercar costs orders of magnitude more. Is there a better driving experience for the money? No ...

... unless we're talking about the almost identically priced Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing I recently couldn't help but throw 700 miles at. But that's a story for another day.