The Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray is the first Corvette to use all-wheel drive and the first to use a hybrid powertrain, two statements that would have been inconceivable to anyone familiar with the Corvette’s sixty-year identity as a rear-wheel-drive, naturally aspirated (or supercharged) American sports car. The E-Ray adds an electric motor to the front axle — drawing from a 1.9 kWh battery that is too small for any meaningful EV range but large enough to provide front-axle torque on demand — while retaining the 6.2-liter LT2 V8 at the rear.

The new BMW M5 will do zero to sixty in 3.4 seconds. It weighs 2,445 kilograms. These two facts exist in a tension that the M division has spent considerable engineering effort resolving and that no amount of engineering can fully reconcile. The car is extraordinarily fast. It is also extraordinarily heavy, and the M5 lineage — from the E28 original through the E39 that most enthusiasts consider the definition of the breed — was built on the proposition that performance and mass should not coexist if the goal is driver engagement.