<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"I have abandoned the interstate.  To hell with it. Man wasn&amp;#039;t built to suffer at 57 mph behind untold hordes of holiday drivers, and neither was the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. My wife and I are heading for the hills, and if the mountain takes us, it&amp;#039;ll be a better fate than the living death that is I-81.  We point the car&amp;#039;s nose vaguely southeast from Raphine, Virginia, tracing the old two-lanes I hounded in high school. The parcels here follow fencerows that have stood since before General William Howe and his troops marched through Philadelphia. The road bends and weaves with the knotted cedar fence posts, gray with weather and pulled upright with rusted barbed wire. I twist the traction control to Sport. The Corvette raises its hackles.  The exhaust opens up, letting the engine bark and startle livestock as we clip past. The dampers and steering sharpen, funneling the pavement&amp;#039;s wrinkled chip and seal through the wheel. There aren&amp;#039;t many electric power steering systems that get it right, but this one comes close. The wheel is properly weighted and tightens up as you go deeper into the drive selector. Much of this feel can be traced to substantial revisions to the steering column itself. Engineers stiffened the column by 150 percent and bolted the steering gear to the car&amp;#039;s front cradle for the first time. As a result, Chevrolet says the entire steering system is five times stiffer than the kit found in the C6.  Despite chatting through a curtain of ones and zeros, the steering system is more communicative than it was on the old car, and it&amp;#039;s considerably more rewarding. We&amp;#039;re clipping apexes under a cloudless Virginia sky, the engine is barely breathing, and we don&amp;#039;t see a soul. The four-lane zombie march is just over a ridge to the east, but we couldn&amp;#039;t be further away.   We follow country backroads until the double yellow runs dry, leaving us on an uneven, unmarked county lane that kinks through the back hollows of the George Washington National Forest. The clapboard shapes of homes built in the early 1800s dot the route, each bookended by tall brick chimneys. Some sigh smoke into the late afternoon sun. Others have been cold longer than I&amp;#039;ve been alive.  The road devolves into a barely maintained park road, and I&amp;#039;m suddenly crawling over a mountain fire trail in someone else&amp;#039;s $63,000 Corvette. The road&amp;#039;s largely passable, but washouts and exposed limestone turn the packed clay into a very expensive obstacle course. The Corvette isn&amp;#039;t exactly known for its approach angle. Our speed sinks to a paltry 16 mph, but we aren&amp;#039;t in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  I stop the car and step outside for a photo. Gravel crunches under my Chucks. It&amp;#039;s quiet save for the exception of the low, impatient grumble from the Stingray&amp;#039;s exhaust. The temperature&amp;#039;s just above freezing, but the thin ribbons of sunlight that slip through the trees are enough to warm my face. The air is sharp and dark with the smell of the forest, and the shutter snaps from the camera are muffled slightly by the trees. I know for certain that this is the first time a 2014 Corvette has sat in this spot. One may never pass this way again. It&amp;#039;s a special thing, and the short pines that line the road are the only audience.  The mountains grow steeper as the pavement returns. The roads wander from valley to valley, following streams that trickle down from the highlands. I&amp;#039;m leaning on the Corvette now, but the joy of 460 lb-ft of torque means I&amp;#039;m not thrashing the engine. There&amp;#039;s pull everywhere, and the car can lope along at 70 mph without breaking 1700 rpm. Chevrolet managed to wring up to 460 hp out of the car&amp;#039;s all-new 6.2-liter LT1 V8, and when optioned up with the available Z51 package, the lump is a track-day weapon. A dry-sump oiling system replaces the wet-sump kit on the standard car, and the optional performance exhaust delivers a satisfying shhhbap with each hard throttle shift.   The road twists with the creek, and abrupt 90-degree turns mark each oxbow. Where the C6 would have pig-nosed itself into oblivion, the C7 delivers sharp turn-in with little in the way of understeer. It&amp;#039;s a miraculous change for a car that used to be a blunt instrument. This thing doesn&amp;#039;t just grip, it handles. Again, that&amp;#039;s thanks in part to the Z51 goodies. Larger, 45-mm piston Bilstein dampers with Magnetic Ride Control replace the stock 35-mm units, and an electronic limited-slip differential can adjust to the traction at hand in as little as one-tenth of a second.  Of course, the fact that the 2014 Corvette is a full inch wider than the C6 doesn&amp;#039;t hurt, either. GM also managed to take a full two feet out of the car&amp;#039;s turning radius, and that does more than make for easy parking maneuvers. For the first time, the Corvette is nimble.  Whereas the C6 would just as soon stuff you in a shallow grave, the C7 wants to work with you. It&amp;#039;s a partner, not an adversary. Roll your eyes all you want about the ruckus GM has made over the Corvette&amp;#039;s new seats. They&amp;#039;re stellar, and they keep you fixed to what&amp;#039;s happening with the chassis. It&amp;#039;s one of the reasons the car seems so cohesive. You feel like you&amp;#039;re part of the Stingray rather than riding in it or on it. It&amp;#039;s an almost Miata-like tightness.  While the standard seven-speed manual transmission is a brilliant piece of equipment, the six-speed auto doesn&amp;#039;t sour the car. The shift logic is sharp enough to keep you from taking a baseball bat to the center console. Chevrolet graced the car with paddle shifters, and while clicking the metal bits delivers crisp shifts, don&amp;#039;t expect dual-clutch quickness. The transmission is usable, not exceptional.  What is exceptional is the customizable, full-color head-up display. While you can toggle through a few screens, I&amp;#039;m fond of the one with the same layout you&amp;#039;d see in the C6.R race car, complete with imitation LED shift lights. They blink green, yellow, and red as you approach redline. I love them. I want them on my coffeemaker. I also wouldn&amp;#039;t mind if my coffeemaker made 6.2-liter V8 noises.   At Blacksburg, we turn north to Narrows, Virginia before catching 61 and continuing southwest. We&amp;#039;re within kissing distance of West Virginia, and up here, snow clings to the mountains. It&amp;#039;s not something you see a lot of at my home in Tennessee, especially before January. It&amp;#039;s gorgeous, and for the first time this season, it feels like the holidays.  As the sun sets, the lingering light licks the ridges around us orange, and I notice we&amp;#039;re tracing another forgotten river. We wind our way down the Blue Ridge, bolting from community to community, all sleepy in the lull of a late November weekend.  It&amp;#039;s easy to forget places like this exist when you&amp;#039;re running door-to-door with the holiday-crazed pack on the Interstate. The secluded spots vanish from your mind the moment you decide you&amp;#039;re on a timetable. But they&amp;#039;re here, quiet and waiting to be found the second you decide you&amp;#039;d rather spend your time with nothing but an open road ahead of you. What if it takes you an extra two hours to get home? You&amp;#039;d only spend them on the couch, anyway.  By the time we hit Rutledge, Tennessee, we&amp;#039;ve covered more than 300 miles, and there&amp;#039;s still plenty of fuel in the tank. Despite my familiarity with the deep end of the throttle, the Corvette&amp;#039;s showing an average consumption of 21 miles per gallon. Sorcery. We have a choice here: take the straight shot down 11 all the way home or drop off on 92, another crooked two-lane. We&amp;#039;ve been in the car for a little over six hours. I ask my wife which route we should take. She eyes the navigation and points to the scrawl on the screen. We turn left and wend our way home. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/features/a6416/c7-corvette-the-antidote-from-a-to-b/>