On one hand, you’ve got America’s mid-engine, V8-powered missile: the C8 Corvette Stingray. On the other, Germany’s most buttoned-up backroad assassin: the M3 Competition xDrive. One’s a musclebound extrovert in a tank top, the other wears Moncler and punches like a surgeon.
Both will set you back around $200,000 drive-away, depending on your appetite for options. Same coin, wildly different energy.
The Stingray gives you a naturally aspirated 6.2L V8 slinging out 369kW and 637Nm, snapping to 100km/h in around 3.5 seconds. It’s rear-wheel drive, low to the ground, and feels like a spaceship trying to seduce you.
The M3, meanwhile, uses a 3.0L twin-turbo six with 375kW and 650Nm, throwing power to all four wheels with all the precision of a sniper. It’s brutal, fast, and about as subtle as a poker face at Crown Casino.
Inside, the Stingray’s cockpit is all theatre: fighter-jet lines, red stitching, buttons for days. The M3 plays the classy card with curved screens, tactile luxury, and just enough tech to remind you it’s 2025.
Plus, you can throw a couple of mates in the back without crushing their knees, something the Corvette would laugh at before revving away.
But here’s the twist.
The Corvette’s not as impractical as you’d think. You can actually fit a full set of golf clubs in the boot. It even comes with a front-end lift so you can clear the aggressive leaf piles in your Toorak driveway without scraping that pointy American nose.
It’s a daily driver disguised as a supercar, and one that makes valet parking a whole lot more interesting.
So what’s your vibe?
The BMW M3 is still the benchmark for people who care about things like boot space and ugly children in the back seat. But if you want to wake up every morning and feel like you’re living in your own Fast & Furious spin-off, the Stingray just became a very real and very loud option.
Same price. Two very different kinds of madness. We like madness.
