2020 Chevrolet Corvette C8: 4 Tech Triumphs

Flagships always get the coolest tech first, and the Corvette C8 is most definitely Chevrolet's flagship and a major standard-bearer for the entire General Motors Corporation. Here are four technologies that piqued the interest of your humble MotorTrendtechnical director.

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Neither is a new technology, but General Motors is the first to combine them in this market and this segment. This is a big deal because the vibration that comes with shutting off half the cylinders is way harder to absorb or mask without a torque converter in the driveline.

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Torque converters are basically fluid couplings, and fluid is great at absorbing vibes. And even when they're locked for fuel savings, their housings can incorporate nifty pendulum mass dampers tuned to absorb torsional wiggles.

All a multiplate clutch pack can do in a twin-clutch system is loosen its grip enough to allow a few 10s of rpm slippage, so that's what happens during the transition between modes. The team still wasn't quite satisfied with the quality of these transitions as of our development drive ride-along, though I couldn't detect four-cylinder operation from the passenger seat.

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The C8 Corvette's front suspension includes screw jacks that can raise the car by 1.6 inches in 2.8 seconds to help the chin spoiler clear aggressive speed bumps, driveway approaches, and the like. The fresh thinking Chevy brings to this staple of mid-engine wedge-mobiles is the option to geo-tag and store each such obstacle in a memory bank, so you need not fuss with manually lifting the nose for every bump, dip, or apron on your daily commute.

The car can even start jacking itself up early if you're approaching a bump at speeds up to 24 mph. Heck, with a memory for 1,000 such places, you can program in every permanent bump or hump you encounter.

With no powertrain in the way and no drive to the front axle dictating constant-velocity-joint angles, it's possible to really crank the front wheels of the C8 Corvette when maneuvering in tight quarters—but only at low speeds and when neither front wheel is articulating over some bump.

The electric power steering, informed by myriad speed and wheel-position sensors, imposes "virtual stops" that limit steering angle based on speed and conditions. At its most extreme limits, the Corvette's turn circle is just 36.4 feet curb to curb, down from the C7's 37.7 feet. This is especially impressive given that the C8's wheelbase is a half-inch longer (at 107.2 inches). Note, without the FE4 suspension, the turn circle diameter is 38.1 feet.

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Our killjoy government just doesn't want us to have fun things like sequential turn signals. There's a minimum amount of light that must be displayed when the signal first illuminates. The first of three elements in a Mustang taillamp are big enough, but cars that attempt to successively illuminate LEDs in the direction of a turn can't meet the standard, so they typically flash a full-size element at the same time (see Audi). The Corvette's LEDs flash on fully, and then switchoffsuccessively from the inside out, indicating the direction of the turn. A clever workaround.