Road and Track includes 2015 Corvette C7 Z06 in its 2016 Performance Car of the Year Comparisson

Road and Track is another automotive publication making living providing evaluations of cars while gladly accepting advertising donations from various automakers.  Since all car magazines include some kind of annual car comparisson and evaluation designed to identify the king of the day (or year), Road and Track conducts its so called Performance Car of the Year contest.

The contest itself is not really about measurable performance, the only metric used is a lap time around a track but the results around the track do not translate directly into final decision to ne that car of the year.  In other words, this is another subjective evaluation within a group of journalists basing their decision the "feel of the car".

When this comparisson took place for the first time, in 2013, Road and Track picked then new 2014 Corvette Stingray as its performance car for 2014.

According to self imposed and pretty screwy guidelines that state

The cars had to be significantly updated versus the year before, and they also had to be at the top of the performance bracket, which means that even though it pains us so, cars like the Mazda Miata had to be left behind. (how did the Ford Fiesta and Mini Cooper JCW end up back in 2013 then?)

Nevertheless, R&T compiles candidates in September and conducts its tests in November. 

For 2015, there was no Corvette present since +General Motors did nothing to change or improve the Stingray and the new Z06 was not available until January 2015, thus, no Corvette last year and Porsche 911 GT3 was the winner.

For this year, the comparisson includes Corvette C7 Z06 but here is the rub: if R&T followed its rules, the newest flagship would not be among the contestants since 2016 is the SECOND PRODUCTION YEAR and except for the shorter warranty, there is no difference between 2015 and 16 Z06.  Nevertheless, obviously R&T is bent on bending its own rules and Z06 (along with advertising donations are included).

But here is the real strange part, unlike the first two years, this one changes the location of the "test track".  Instead of the previous Detroit air strip aka Motown Mile, this time, it is nothing else than the National Corvette Museum Track that just happened to be located not only in Bowling Green but right across the Corvette Assembly Plant as well. 

So in other words, not only is Road and Track testing the car on the Z06 test track (the other test track would be Milford) but also literally right next door to the place where the car is built.  Is this a coincidence?  Absolutely not, after seeing what happened during the disaster called Motor Trend Best Driver's Car 2015, one does not have to be a conspiracy theory supporter to figure this part out. 

Apparently +Tadge Juechter learned the lesson from Laguna Seca and the value of so called factory field support team that supposedly had no clue what happened to the tested flagship and not to chance, will have the entire plant ready to lend a hand or wrench in case of trouble.  Shit, maybe even produce a replacement car in case this car takes a shit as well?

The change of test track has another implication as well, no way to compare results from the previous years, a clean slate instead, making the current comparisson quite valuable.

Finally, something else is strange here: the R&T flagship looks a lot like the one that took the shit during MT contest.  Has this piece of shit been fixed or is it a look alike replacement?  Surely, GM would not be stupid to supply the same car that already had problems?  Maybe GM is that stupid though?