The Corvette GS is the greatest Vette ever — and it's only $70,000 (GM)

Corvette Grand Sport

The Corvette GS sits in between the Stingray and the Z06.
The Corvette "Grand Sports" was first produced in the 1960s.
There's almost nothing in the world that matches the GS for price and performance.

I'm not going to get into the long and illustrious history of the Chevrolet Corvette, in continuous production since the 1950s and now into its seventh generation. You can look it up.

Suffice it to say that we really, really like Vettes. The C7 Stingray was our 2014 Business Insider Car of the Year. It set a whole new standard for this most American of vehicles (still bolted together with patriotic care in beautiful Bowling Green, Kentucky).

Since we got behind the wheel of the glorious Stingray with a seven-speed manual transmission, we've sampled the same car in a convertible version with an automatic — and outfitted with Apple CarPlay — and taken a rocket-ship ride on the supercar-defying Zo6, a 650-horsepower monster of a machine.

We thought we'd seen it all, Vette-wise. And then an Arctic White 2017 Corvette Grand Sport Convertible paid us a brief visit last year. Too brief — we had it for only about a day and a half. But we lucked out on the weather in the Northeast before some harsh winter conditions set in.

Few cars available right now are this good. And no others are this good for a base price of about $70,000. Ours stickered at $85,910, and it was nicely appointed (the "Black Suede Design Package" alone added four grand).

Here's what we thought:

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