2005 Chevrolet Corvette

With the "C6," the little changes make a big difference.

When 50,000 Corvette fans gathered inNashville , last year, to celebrate the legendary marque's 50th anniversary, there was a palpable sense something was missing. Spread around the grounds of Titans Stadium, you could spot just about every possible permutation, from lovingly-restored first-generation 'Vettes to one-off Le Mans racers.

What you couldn't find was the C6, shorthand for the sixth-generation Corvette, that was originally supposed to be unveiled at the Nashville bash. The project was pushed back a year by GM's "car czar," Bob Lutz, who wanted to ensure the C6 would not only be better than the vehicle it replaced, but that it would be a truly world-class sports car. Corvette fans - and there are many better described as fanatics - might take exception, but for much of its 51-year history, Corvette has had more in common with the classic American muscle car than with true sports cars like the Porsche 911.

That began to change with the debut of the fifth-generation Corvette, in 1997, which had lots more to offer than just a badass V-8. And you knew it, just by looking at the C5, clearly a car transformed, the dramatic changes in its appearance underscoring what had been done under the skin. While the C5 came temptingly close, it had not quite chinned the bar. And so, despite his disappointment at the delay, Corvette chief engineer Dave Hill relished the opportunity to put a little more effort into the C6. The Corvette team pored over virtually every detail of the car, addressing everything from interior refinement to off-the-line acceleration.

Evolution or revolution?

What they've wrought may not be apparent immediately. Unlike the revolutionary C5, the new car is what designers like to call an "evolutionary" update. At casual glance, there are plenty of folks who might not even realize they're looking at a C6. But spend just the briefest time behind the wheel and you'll recognize this as an entirely new automobile - Hill likes to point out that 85 percent of it has been changed, at least if you measure by weight. Even the little things make a big difference. And so, for the first time, the new Corvette is absolutely ready to take on all comers.

We took delivery of our C6 one recent summer's morning, product manager Harlan Charles handing us the keys to what was just the 20th car to come off the line in Bowling Green, Kentucky . Journalists often get their first ride in early production cars, but we were immediately impressed by the lack of such start-up snags as ill-fitting trim pieces.

Many folks in our little enclave of Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, have gotten into the habit of driving down Cambridge Boulevard to see what vehicles wind up in our driveway each week. And as Charles and I did a long walkaround, we couldn't ignore the steady stream of commuters pausing to inspect the new Corvette.

Not all were sure what they were seeing. At first glance, the C6 bears a strong similarity to the outgoing, fifth-generation 'Vette. But closer inspection reveals some significant changes, such as the more elegantly sculpted tail, which resolves one of the old car's biggest visual weaknesses. The most controversial? The decision to abandon Corvette's classic pop-up headlights, but the new High-Intensity Discharge lamps offer several distinct advantages. There's more light, for one thing, and HIDs fit into a tighter package.

Adding up the numbers

That helped engineers accomplish a critical goal. Though the wheelbase of the C6 has been stretched an inch, the 2005 Corvette is a full five inches shorter and more than an inch narrower than last generation - giving it essentially the same footprint as Porsche's 911. Curb weight for the base coupe has been trimmed 35 pounds, to 3179 lb, not all that much more than the Porsche.

Corvette's have always looked sleek, but when it comes to aerodynamics, appearances often deceive. The Corvette of the early 1980s created so much turbulence at highway speeds, it reportedly had a lower coefficient of drag (CD) when turned backwards in the General Motors wind tunnel. Last generation's car had a slick .300 Cd. The new car cuts that to an impressive .286.