2014 Corvette Stingray and Z51

The 2014 Corvette Stingray and Z51 came in six trims spanning a $56,000 to $67,000 price range, but the real story is what GM packed into every one of them: a reworked interior with no visible plastic, a driver mode dial that changes the steering itself, and a Z51 version quick enough to worry cars costing twice as much. Read on to find out which spec sheet actually tells the truth about this generation.

Six trim levels, three price tiers per body style, and a spec sheet that reads more like a menu than a car brochure — the 2014 Corvette Stingray and Z51 made buyers work for their decision. Somewhere between the $56,000 entry point and the nearly $67,000 top-of-the-line Z51, GM packed in enough electronics, adjustable everything, and genuine track hardware that picking the wrong trim barely mattered. The real question wasn’t which version to buy. It was whether the fastest one could actually back up a spec sheet that ambitious.

Six Versions, One Very Wide Price Spread

The seventh-generation Corvette Stingray launched in six distinct configurations for 2014: a Convertible 1LT starting at $56,000 running up to a 3LT at $64,005, with a 2LT trim splitting the difference, plus three parallel Z51 versions starting at $58,800 for the 1LT and topping out at $66,805 for the Z51 3LT. Every trim came with a choice of a seven-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission, and the standard car delivered a genuinely usable 17 mpg city and 29 mpg highway when driven with some restraint and eco mode engaged — respectable numbers for a car this quick, and proof that GM wasn’t willing to sacrifice everyday usability just to hit bigger performance targets. That price spread mattered because the gap between the cheapest Stingray and the priciest Z51 wasn’t just about badge and trim — it tracked directly to real differences in suspension hardware, brakes, and cooling capacity that showed up the moment either car hit a track.

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An Interior Finally Built to Match the Price Tag

The redesigned cabin gave both front seats equal room, moved the main eight-inch touchscreen to one side to expose a glove box, and offered an optional second eight-inch screen for buyers who wanted more. Every visible surface was painted or wrapped rather than molded plastic, including a newly downsized, wrapped steering wheel. Base trim came with a powder-coated finish; stepping up added carbon fiber accents for $995, a vinyl-and-stitched-leather look or suede covering for another $995, and a full leather package that alone added more than $8,000 to the base price. Seats came in a standard or track-focused version, both with eight-way power adjustment, and passengers got their own temperature control plus dedicated grab handles. None of these options were bundled into a single package, either — buyers picked and matched trim materials individually, which meant no two heavily optioned interiors necessarily looked exactly alike coming off the same assembly line.

A Mode Dial That Actually Changes the Steering

Driver aids centered on a mode selector mounted in the console, cycling through snow, rain, dry, eco, tour, sport, and track settings, with each mode adjusting the variable-ratio, electronically assisted steering in real time rather than just changing throttle mapping. Behind that sat a data management system offering three separate tachometer display styles, along with readouts covering cylinder activation status, active exhaust engagement, launch control, navigation, and the traction and stability systems, with additional data available on automatic gearbox shift points and magnetic shock behavior for cars equipped with those options. Active exhaust deserves its own mention: a pair of butterfly valves let the driver bypass the muffler system entirely, changing both the sound and, nominally, the horsepower output on demand.

No More Parking Brake Lever, Anywhere

One of the smaller but more telling changes for 2014 was the total disappearance of the mechanical parking brake lever across every trim, replaced by an electronic control built into the console. It’s a minor detail on paper, but it signals how thoroughly GM re-engineered the car’s interior architecture rather than simply restyling the outgoing generation’s cabin. GM clearly decided that a driver reaching for a mechanical lever belonged to an earlier era of Corvette, one this generation was explicitly trying to leave behind. Combined with the relocated glove box access and dual touchscreen option, the console redesign reflects a car built around modern electronics from the ground up, not one with new tech bolted onto an old layout.

A Weight Increase That Came From the Right Places

The 2014 Corvette landed about 100 pounds heavier than the prior model year, settling at a curb weight of 3,298 pounds, even with a new, stronger aluminum frame underneath. That extra mass came almost entirely from a more heavily equipped interior rather than any compromise in the structure, and the payoff shows up in the numbers: a stiffer frame, a 49/51 front-to-rear weight distribution, and better overall balance than any Corvette generation that came before it. Heavier and better-balanced rarely go together in a performance car redesign, but GM engineered this one to pull off both at once.

Brakes Built to Match a 455-Horsepower Engine

Every trim came standard with Brembo four-piston fixed calipers, biting down on 13.6-inch slotted rotors up front and 13.3-inch slotted rotors in back, running on standard-equipment Michelin tires. Shock absorbers were either 1.4-inch or 1.8-inch Bilstein units depending on configuration, with adjustable Magnetic Ride Control shocks available as an option specifically on Z51 versions. That kind of standard-equipment braking hardware would have been an expensive option on most competitors in this price range. That braking package wasn’t overkill for the sake of a spec sheet — it was sized specifically to handle the 6.2-liter LT1 V8’s output at speed, not just to stop the car from a parking-lot crawl.

The Numbers the Z51 Was Built Around

The Z51-equipped Stingray puts the 6.2-liter LT1 V8 to work producing 455 horsepower at 6,000 rpm and 460 lb-ft of torque at 4,600 rpm, enough to run 0-60 mph in 3.8 seconds and complete the quarter mile in 12.2 seconds at 117 mph. Those figures put the Z51 solidly in the company of dedicated sports cars costing considerably more, and they came without abandoning the seven-speed manual option or the everyday-usable fuel economy figures that made the base Stingray a legitimate daily driver. It’s the kind of performance envelope that used to require a much higher price of admission, and GM built it into a car that still started under $60,000 in its base Z51 form.

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