The Corvette E-Ray is significant in a lot of ways. It’s the first hybrid Corvette, the first all-wheel-drive Corvette, and it’s the most Corvette of Corvettes. Wait, what?

Corvettes are built of an ethos: take what the fancy Europeans are doing, and democratize it. Simplify the formula until you get to a point that regular folks could possibly, one day, attain one. Sure, Corvette was late to the game when it came time to move the engine from the front to the rear-middle, but once it did, there was no ignoring the progress. The C8 Z06, last year’s Performance Car of the Year, took what was perhaps the best mid-engined Ferrari of all time, the 458 Speciale, reverse-engineered and improved it, resulting in the most American of Italian-style supercars. With the E-Ray, the Corvette team tackles what Ferrari and McLaren are doing now rather than six years ago.