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2020 Chevy C8 Corvette rated at 15 mpg city, 27 mpg highway

It bests the front-engine C7 by 2 mpg highway, while the city numbers are identical.

Daniel Golson Former social media editor
2 min read
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The Chevy Corvette remains a surprisingly efficient sports car.

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Ahead of the C8 R race car's debut last weekend at the Rolex 24 in Daytona Beach, Florida, chief engineer Ed Piatek announced that the new mid-engine C8 Corvette will officially be rated by the EPA at 15 miles per gallon city, 27 mpg highway.

Compared with the now-dead, front-engine C7 model, the new 'Vette matches its predecessor in the city but bests it by 2 mpg on the highway. (I'm using an automatic base-model C7 in this comparison, as the C8 is auto-only.) The C8's combined figure hasn't been announced yet, but the C7 was rated at 18 mpg combined.

Piatek says these numbers give the new Corvette a driving range of 500 miles, a good deal more than the 333 miles that the EPA quotes for the C7. A long range was one of the goals for the engineers, as the C8 was designed to be just as good of a touring car as the C7 despite the new engine positioning -- thus the ability to still fit a few sets of golf clubs in the trunk.

We don't yet know about any of the C8's performance models, but the Z06 and top-end ZR1 versions of the C7 each got worse fuel economy than the base car. That may not be the case with the C8, though, as the highest-performance versions of the mid-engine car are rumored to use hybrid powertrains and maybe even ones that plug in. 

Chevy should be releasing more information about the C8's fuel economy in the coming weeks. Until then, you can drool over this video of a camo'd C8 that's likely the Z06 model testing in the mountains of California.

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Originally published Jan. 24.