Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. FIRST DRIVE

The engine starts with a button to the right of the wheel, and there’s a purposeful growl from the engine. At low revs it’s rather discreet, but flex the throttle and there’s a beautiful rasp from the four flared pipes in the centre of the car’s rear.

To get to the sinewy, winding roads we need to get out of Washington DC, so there’s some morning traffic to negotiate before anything else. The Z51 Corvette gets an electronic LSD versus the standard car’s mechanical affair, and it also gets magnetic adaptive dampers which can be controlled via a dial on the transmission tunnel. This Driver Mode Selector system fiddles with 12 different aspects of the car, from the LSD and steering to the throttle, shift mode, fuel management and exhaust noise. Five settings are available – Weather (for rain, which we won’t use), Eco, Tour, Sport and Track. For this less exciting section of the journey, I select Tour, which keeps everything soft, manageable and relatively refined. The seats – which adjust to just about acceptably low levels for my lofty back – are perfectly comfortable, there’s cruise control and the stereo isn’t bad. Either. The ride is more than reasonable as well, even with the fairly lousy state of the freeway leaving Washington. Only the Z51 gets these fancy dampers, but they’re working well to soak up the divots.

After passing through a handful of suburban towns, the scenery opens up to glorious green pastures and hills, dotted with huge farmhouses, most with a battered old pick-up truck parked outside. Country roads stream off the main highways, and promise much. But as it turns out, the drive is a fairly frustrating experience – never have I experienced roads with so many blind crests as in the rolling countryside of northern Virginia. With the ever-present risks of massive trucks and tractors coming the other way, it makes pressing on nigh-on impossible, so the full workout of the car will have to wait until we can get our hands on it back here in the desert.

But the drive is enough to give me a flavour. And it tastes good. Basically, the new Corvette is a massive improvement in all areas. The engine is the most familiar aspect of the Corvette – a brawny, naturally-aspirated V8 that delivers great dollops of torque and, with the DMS now switched to Track, a barking, hard-edged fanfare from the four trumpets at the back. 460bhp doesn’t sound like a huge amount these days, but it’s still plenty enough to send the Corvette rocketing forward instantly.

So far, so familiar. Where things have changed is in the corners. The nose is poised and dives into apexes, the front tyres hanging on beautifully and there’s plenty of grip at the rear to get back on the power and blast out when the road opens up. It’s balanced, composed even when you start to throw it around a bit – it never feels like it’s going to bite, and all its movements are telegraphed through the chassis. The steering, though a little lacking in texture, is meaty with plenty of weight from the smaller-than-before wheel, and the transmission is super-smooth in its changes using the manual paddles, even though the action is disappointing – it feels like pressing a button rather than slamming home another cog. The changes are maybe even too smooth in Track mode, the most hardcore setting available. In fact, Track feels like it should be the Sport setting – I’m quite happy blatting through this rural idyll with everything set to max, and I wonder if there could have been an even stiffer, more visceral mode for the race track. This feels, from our first interaction with it, like a car that yearns to be thrashed hard on a track, something I sadly didn’t get to do on this event.

A seven-speed manual, with active rev matching technology, is also available on the new Corvette, but it’s the automatic that will comprise the vast majority of Middle East sales. Although it’s smooth, it could perhaps do with being a fraction quicker when you’re really on it.

So, is the new Corvette a genuine rival to the 911? No, it’s not. The Porsche is right the pinnacle of sports cars, and is sharper, more luxurious and generally all round better than Chevrolet’s offering. But it’s also considerably more expensive. The base 911 Carrera starts at $93,543 in the Middle East, while the Corvette will start at around $55,000 (that’s an educated estimate – final prices haven’t yet been confirmed for the region). The Corvette is a massive improvement on what’s gone before, and a genuinely usable everyday sports car. We’re salivating at the thought of the more hardcore editions that will doubtless follow this base model. When you factor in the price, and the rise in its handling game, the new Stingray starts to look very good indeed.