Chevrolet Corvette Stingray And Cadillac CTS

General Motors gets the handling religion.

The numbers car: It looks great on paper, and then you drive it. Though able to bruise internal organs during acceleration, braking, and cornering tests, the numbers car is usually too anodyne and too remote to foster lasting relationships with serious drivers. In most cases, it’s not much fun unless it’s at a test track doing the one thing it does well – generating numbers. Numbers might not lie, but sometimes they skip to the last page.

The CTS has always been the Cadillac for people who prefer solid handling to landau roofs

GM has built its share of number generators in the past. But subordinating the feel of a car to raw metrics doesn’t lead to great cars, just great Excel files. Judging from the new Cadillac CTS and Chevrolet Corvette, GM now knows how to bridge the gap between the driver and the spread-sheet. These cars aren’t simply about the cold pursuit of data. They’re about the interaction between human and machine.

So what separates a numbers car from a driver’s car? Steering feel, for a start. Steering tells the story of the car in motion, and in the Corvette it reports the squirm of the tires and, by varying the resistance, every tenth-of-a-g change in cornering force. Information pulses through even more staccato in the CTS, if you can believe it, but the Corvette’s steering is hugely improved over its C6 predecessor’s.

The CTS seemed to prioritize numbers ahead of the driving experience

Second, the suspension tune has to harmonize with the steering for the car to feel right. Engineers have to find the ideal spring, damper, anti-roll-bar, and bushing calibrations so the body and suspension react in concert with the driver’s inputs. Add a structure stiff enough to let the suspension do its job and a gearbox that spurs on the engine, and you have a car that will provoke stupid grins every time you drive it.

It is true that previous Corvettes came alive and got talkative when pushed to the edge. While the Corvette was doing anything else, though, such as fetching take-out Thai food, the controls went mute. But the new C7 is talking up a storm.

But the new C7 is talking up a storm

The thing is just so well honed. Not only is its electrically assisted steering system unexpectedly sensitive, you can practically feel the thousands of man-hours spent developing its Michelin tires, its stiffer structure, and, on Z51 models, its electronically controlled limited-slip differential. Even on narrower rubber, the C7 has grip figures on par with the outgoing Z06. So, okay, numbers aren’t totally irrelevant. They’re just not everything.

Rear visibility isn't as expansive as it was in the C6 – the B-pillars taper noticeably toward the spine of the car as they extend rearward, pinching the rearview mirror's sightlines.

The Cadillac hasn’t quite made the same leap as the Corvette, but it didn’t have to. The CTS has always been the Cadillac for people who prefer solid handling to landau roofs. At its birth in ’03, however, the CTS seemed to prioritize numbers ahead of the driving experience. What’s unusual about the CTS is that it represents GM persevering against its worst, most empirically driven instincts, methodically evolving the car’s mechanicals and ladling on more feel with each generation. Yes, the General has flirted with putting experience ahead of the numbers before, but it never took. Remember the Oldsmobile Achieve SCX, Cutlass Calais 442 W41, and the Chevrolet Citation X-11? No? That’s because GM stopped suckling those sales runts. But the General has stuck with the CTS, making each successive model a more refined and entertaining sports sedan. The CTS is now unequivocally the best-handling car in the mid-size luxury segment.

Ironically, by focusing less on the numbers and more on tactile sensations, GM has achieved a rare numerical feat: two cars on our 10Best list.

Technical specs