It's not every day a college senior gets an email from the editor-in-chief of Motor Trend, Ed Loh, asking, "What are you doing July 18-20? If you're busy, can you cancel?" Most of my friends are on their phones trying to catch Pokémon, and Motor Trend is asking me to go drive the new 2017 Corvette Grand Sport at Atlanta Motorsports Park. How could I not be excited?

I was so excited that I was the first journalist to the event. I mean, they hadn't even finished setting up when I got there at 9 a.m. But that meant our photographers and I could have one of the Corvettes for most of that day. So we drove north for about two hours until we found some twisty mountain roads. To be honest, I don't remember how we got there. I was following my photographer, who had a specific place in mind, and I spent the drive looking around the car, playing with the settings, experimenting with fuel economy … you know, just playing with the car's stuff.

Starting on this drive north, the first thing I wanted to know was real highway mpg. So to get rid of the current calculated mpg average, I loosely tested its 0-60 mph; the sound coming from the quad pipe sounds like it's right out of the five-time GTLM Le Mans-winning race car. But my average mpg dropped down from 20.7 mpg to 9.9 mpg. My goal was to see if I could raise my mpg average using the Corvette's Eco mode. What's really interesting about Eco mode is that once you get up to a cruising speed, the engine shuts off half of its cylinders. So you get full V-8 power when you want it with the fuel efficiency of a four-cylinder engine on the highway. I've learned this as displacement on demand, but now I got to test it out.



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After setting the cruise control, I had time to tinker with the driver screen interface. That's the screen that's only accessible through the buttons on the steering wheel. I mentioned the mpg average first because that was the first display I saw. There are a series of other options you can have displayed, such as navigation, radio, tire pressure, all good things but nothing new.

The other old thing is GM's Magnetic Ride Control. I'm not sure if the other cars I have driven had this system or not because honestly I was just too happy to be in the driver's seat, but this was the first time I felt the difference. The highway we took had everything from construction to smooth roads, and not once did this track-focused car punch me in the spine. I'll say that again, a track-focused car that isn't miserable. What? Are you kidding me? I've spent a lot of time contemplating whether I should sacrifice comfort for handling for my street car, but now I can have both?

The car can snap from soft and compliant to a road-eating monster with just a flick of the wrist. We found the road we were looking for, and man, this car can run. I eagerly switched the suspension setting to Track and hated it. It felt like an addict looking for another fix. The car just acted too twitchy for a mountain road with the suspension set to Track. I switched it to Sport mode, and the car drove like butter. The steering weight was enough to feel like I wasn't having to work at turning, but there is enough resistance and feedback in the wheel to make me feel connected to the driving experience. That connection with a car causes a driver's confidence to flourish.

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What doesn't boost a driver's confidence is unexpected rain. About three minutes after we found a good photo location, it started to pour. So we drove two hours north just to turn around and drive back to the hotel we started at. Which was fine for me because that meant four free hours with the car. But what I wasn't OK with was getting lost in the rain with the Corvette's Michelin Pilot Super Sport 285-width front and 325-width rear tires on curvy mountain rounds. A tire that has a lot of grip in dry conditions usually doesn't have good grip in the rain.

Getting lost on the way back was my fault; I put the wrong destination into the navigation system. When I thought I was going to the hotel, I was actually heading to Atlanta Motorsports Park, and so was the rain. I was also dumb to not realize the car has Apple CarPlay, so once your phone is connected, the infotainment screen becomes your basic iPhone home screen. But the standard navigation system took me through some very rustic farm villages and curvy roads and then dropped me off at a dirt road. Like a Corvette would go off-road. â¦



Luckily I found my way back to a section of twisty road where I could test the car's Wet mode. Basically, it's like driving the car with your mother with one hand on the fuel cut-off switch and one foot on the brake. I discovered this doing one turn in an empty, wet parking lot and not on the street, though: I'm no hero here. I spent most of that time driving back panicking about someone hitting me. I made it back fine and just in time to see five-time Le Man GTLM class-winner Oliver Gavin talk about his thoughts on how the Corvette Grand Sport drives on track.

The most important thing Gavin mentioned was how the production car feels very similar to the race car on a racetrack. To prove it, here's the Performance Data Recorder (PDR) info of my quickest recorded lap and Gavin's in the same car. These were recorded during the next day of the event at Atlanta Motorsports Park.

One key fact the Corvette chief engineer Tadge Juechter said the night before the track day: "[The Grand Sport is] not race-inspired. It's race-bred. … We've done a direct technology transfer from the race cars onto the production cars." And man, does the final product prove it. The Grand Sport on a rollercoaster track like Atlanta Motorsports Park is phenomenal. It's the daily driver's track car.

My favorite sections of turns at the track are Turns 5 and 6. During that section you're diving down into the brake zone, inclining through the turn-in, cresting a hill on late apex, and then driving down the exit of Turn 6. It was there where I noticed the car doing the most work. The rear of the car would get skittish braking down into 6, but with the combination of 460 hp, the taller rear wing, and 325-width rear tires, the rear snap settles. That snap settling allows you to properly prepare for the turn-in for Turn 6. You can feel this all happen within milliseconds, and it's breathtaking.

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A brief disclosure: The car I drove on the street did not have the available Z07 performance package with the much grippier Michelin Sport Cup 2, the carbon-ceramic brakes, and more body downforce, but the cars in the video did have the Z07 package. But if you plan to do track events at Sebring or Lime Rock or Atlanta Motorsports Park, you would want the Z07 package. That's the intent behind this Grand Sport; it can be the Corvette you've always wanted. And how could you not want a 'Vette that can take Turn 16 at Atlanta Motorsports Park at 120 mph?

I do love driving the Corvette, but this car isn't the best thing to drive on the highway, and it isn't the fastest track-prepared car you can get for that money, but it does put itself in a class of its own.

The C7 Corvette Grand Sport lies in the intersection of the sports cars versus luxury cars Venn diagram. By day the car is a road-eating machine, and by night it becomes a civilized cruiser. It's power when you want it and economy when you need it. It comes with strong, supportive seats that are also heated and air-conditioned. For a little more money than the base Stingray, you can have your dream Corvette that you can drive to the grocery story, a racetrack, a fancy restaurant, to a religious gathering of your choosing, etc. It can be your daily driver and your Sunday Funday car. Need I say more?