The Most Affordable Mid-Engine Sports Car You Can Buy New In 2025

The Porsche Cayman is an excellent mid-engined sports car. It's just about all anyone could want below (and well into) the six-figure mark, offering sublime handling, a great engine, and even a manual transmission in The Year of Our Lord 2025. You can also opt for its Boxster twin, which brings open-top fun into the equation.

Cross $100,000 in MSRP, and the world of mid-engine sports cars opens up even more, giving way to high-end exotics that belong in the garages of the ruling class, as well as the six-cylinder Porsches. These days, Porsche keeps its best engines for its most expensive cars. Swinging the midship sports car category back the other way, however, has always proven challenging. Porsche and Toyota were, for a very long time, really the only game in town. But now there's an affordable mid-engine sports car on the market a whole heck of a lot more people can afford: the C8 Chevrolet Corvette. Its V8 engine and killer soundtrack come at a much more palatable entry point: $69,995 MSRP.

2025 Corvette C8 ZR1 in Blue Driving On A Cliff

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The Mid-Engined Corvette Is Not A New Idea

CERV I, CERV III, and CERV II

More than 65 years ago marks the beginning of the C8-generation Corvette, the first of the Corvette lineage to move its engine aft of the front wheels. The idea was penned in 1959 by Zora Arkus-Duntov, a Belgian-Russian engineer who joined up with Chevrolet just after the first Corvette entered production. This early prototype, known as Chevrolet Engineering Research Vehicle (CERV) 1, looked a lot like the Formula racers of the day.

Arkus-Duntov would spend his 23-year career at General Motors as a champion of the idea of a mid-engined Corvette. Many, many more prototypes would follow, usually helmed by Arkus-Duntov and his insistence on a mid-engine layout. 1968's Chevrolet Astro 2 was a more production-ready take on the idea, with a mid-engine layout and room for passengers and their luggage. In 1986, the Corvette Indy prototype was powered by a twin-turbo V8 and all-wheel drive, and again pushed the engine ahead of the rear wheels. More than 10 prototypes led up to the C8 Corvette we know today, and more than a lifetime of work from Arkus-Duntov, who died at age 86 on April 21, 1996.

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Why Make A Mid-Engine Corvette?

2024 Chevy C8 Corvette-1

Taking the Corvette mid-engine was a challenge that had been waiting in the rafters for future Chevrolet engineers since Arkus-Duntov's death, but it took until 2019 for the first C8 to finally debut. Simply put, Chevy believed it was still extracting additional performance from the front-engine layout in the years leading up to the C8, and that moving the engine simply wasn't necessary to keep the Corvette competitive.

Right around the debut of the C6 ZR1, Chevrolet started to run into challenges, says Tadge Juechter, chief engineer of the C8 told Road & Trackin a 2019 interview. "We knew we were in trouble when we were bringing out the 638-horsepower C6 ZR1, and we had a hell of a time beating the 505-horsepower Z06’s 0-to-60. It was only because of the Michelin tires that we were able to." Jeuchter said then that the engine needed to get heavier to be more powerful, and beating physics became a real challenge.

Soon, the Corvette's highest-performance models turned into burnout machines, not sports cars. "We couldn't hook up [the rear tires]," he says. "Fifty/fifty weight distribution is great when you’re not power-limited. That’s why race cars evolved with the engine in the back. You really want more like 40/60, so you can get the power down."

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There's A C8 Corvette For Everyone Now

2024 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Front Three Quarter TopSpeed

That 2019 interview was just the start of what was to come. While the Corvette is a good $10,000 more than its initial sub-$60,000 starting price, it's still the most affordable mid-engine sports car on the new car market. Used versions can be even more affordable. But go for a new one, and Chevy has a Corvette for just about everyone. Every Corvette also comes with one heck of an engine, including the base model. You can check out the specs below, which far out-perform even higher-trim Boxsters and Caymans, and indeed even some 911s.

Specifications

This motor powers the entry-level C8 coupe and convertible, though it's worth pointing out that even the coupe is really a Targa with a removable roof panel that'll fit in the trunk. Unfortunately, the C8 saw massive gains in performance at the cost of some feel, and even the cheapest Corvettes can't be had with a manual transmission — an eight-speed auto is the only transmission option.

Three trims are offered for the coupe and convertible: 1LT, 2LT, and 3LT, along with a host of options, like the Z51 Performance package, which adds sporty suspension, a more aggressive exhaust, a re-tuned differential, and more. Many of these trims and options are commonplace, even as you climb up the trim ladder. Chevy now also offers a hybrid V8 Corvette paired with all-wheel drive, in addition to the supercar-beating Z06 and the even higher-performance ZR1.

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The Money

Chevy Corvette ZR1 Lap Records Hero

Of course, these ritzier models also come at a very literal cost. But so does the competition. The next cheapest mid-engined new car on the market is the Porsche Cayman/Boxster. I like a Porsche as much as the next guy (I've even got a 986 Boxster myself) but the company makes you pay for a lot of badge in 2025. Base Caymans start at $74,795 with a four-cylinder and 300 horsepower — nowhere near the Corvette's figures, and for more money. To get what you want out of the Porsche experience, it's even more money. To compare, I built a 718 Boxster and a Corvette to directly contrast side-by-side. You can see the pricing in the gallery above, but it's no contest on paper.

The Corvette 2LT I built came out to $85,630 including $1,695 in destination charges and $8,535 in options, the aforementioned Z51 Performance package among them. I got a cool color (the new-for-2025 purple hue), a nice Nappa leather interior, and some odds and ends like a bag for the removable roof panel all for less than the starting price of a six-cylinder Cayman or Boxster, both of which eclipse $100k.

Contrast that with my selected 718 Boxster specification. Even with a 394-horsepower 4.0-liter six-cylinder, the 718's biggest edge is its six-speed manual, a no-cost option. However, Porsche wants an arm and a leg for just about anything else, and if pure performance per dollar is your goal, the 718 looks like a downright waste of money. I "spent" $15,920 on options alone. MSRP was a whopping $119,715. The value proposition offered by the C8 is off the charts and all you need to see that is spending about 25 minutes on Porsche's configurator. The C8 Corvette simply can't be beaten when it comes to affordable mid-engine performance in 2025, and continues to be a benchmark for affordable sports cars.