The 2014 Corvette Stingray [1] is a masterpiece of technology; a powerful, light, and incredibly connected ride that GM’s engineers reworked from every angle. This includes little details, like using “smart materials” [2] to save weight, as well as an exhaust system that can change tunes depending on your driving mode.
But how, exactly, does one change the tune of an exhaust while cruising down the highway? To explain, GM turns the camera on Chevrolet Europe’s technical manager Peter Herrmann. It’s a lot more complicated than you might think.
The 2014 Corvette comes with five different driving modes; Tour, Weather, Eco, Sport, and Track. As you might imagine, Tour mode is for day-to-day driving around, while Sport mode is for when you want to get aggressive. GM linked these modes to variable valves to the driving modes via an electric motor, rather than just relying on a vacuum solenoid as in previous versions.
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This results in a sort of “split” personality, a Jekyll-and-Hyde difference in sound between cruising and really smashing the accelerator. Unlike previous dual-mode exhausts, GM makes this feature standard on all Corvettes, allowing for an optimal driving experience no matter what you set out to do. It’s the little details like this that make the 2014 Corvette such an incredible step up over the last model.