It was about halfway through our Corvette delivery experience last Thursday
morning when I realized it: There's a 500-mile break-in period on the Stingray. I'm supposed to drive the Stingray home. I live a little more than 500 miles away.
The new long-termer needed to get from the National Corvette museum and factory
in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where we picked it up to the R&T office in Michigan. The short route is mostly on I-75, which is one of the most boring
stretches of highway around. I was now fully in charge of the car's break-in period. I was about to be taunted for most of the drive.
The break-in procedure is pretty standard. For the first 200 miles: no hard cornering or big brake applications. And the first 500 miles: no full-throttle
starts or abrupt stops, vary the speed and no cruise control, don't exceed 4000 rpm, no downshifts that will zing the engine past 4000, and don't lug the
engine.
I don't break in a lot of new cars. Manufacturers usually deliver them to us already run-in to save us the trouble—and them the likelihood of future
mechanical disaster. Since the C7 Corvette has fully
digital gauges, GM was able to throw in an ingenious line of code. It changes the tachometers (yes, plural: one on the main gauge screen and one on our
car's head-up display) to display a yellow zone centered around 4000 rpm and a red zone just north of that. Once the odometer hits the 500-mile mark, the
special code disappears into the computer, never to be seen again.
To be honest, the car is so tractable and the transmission so full of gears that I didn't have much trouble keeping the revs low. I almost forgot that was
my aim since I was in and out of traffic, construction zones, and rain showers most of the way. And the car is comfortable, not to mention a nice place to
be—another new feature for a Corvette.
So instead of playing with the throttle, I entertain myself with the various gauge layouts and screens. Flipping back and forth leads me to the
fuel-economy pages, one of which has a V8 or V4 icon telling me which mode the engine is in. This reminds me that our manual car only shuts off four cylinders
when it's in Eco mode. I switch over to Eco mode.
Facing limited open road and the engine's clipped wings, I decide I'll embrace the break-in process and hypermile. In a Corvette. Voluntarily. I amuse myself by watching the
50-mile fuel-economy average jump from a high of about 26 mpg to 31.3. I giggle to an empty passenger seat and keep making time. This car hasn't even hit redline yet and it's already doing remarkable things.
Rush hour arrives and my fuel economy takes a little hit. There's no way to give my clutch leg a rest in the stop-and-go, but the Vette comes with a
laziness solution in the form of automatic rev-matching. I turn that on and basically treat the car like an automatic with an extra pedal, something I
probably wouldn't do on a track or a back road, but it really makes the highway drive that much easier. It's actually kind of enjoyable. Modern technology,
man.
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