The EPA has finalized the fuel economy numbers for the elusive 2022 Chevy Corvette. It officially gets 16 mpg in the city, 24 on the highway and 19 mpg combined. Those numbers are 1 mpg better in the city than last year, but 3 mpg worse on the highway, which is historically where America's Sports Car slipped through the air effortlessly.

It turns out, the EPA tests the car that's most representative of the model. And since Chevy sold about 70% of its Corvettes with the Z51 package, that's the one that gets examined. The Z51 package, you'll remember, gets a shorter final drive ratio that lowers its high-speed fuel efficiency (it lowers it's low-speed efficiency too, but Chevy was able to make up for that with the revised engine tuning).

Obviously, we wouldn't expect Chevy's flame-throwing 6.2-liter LT4 V8 to get great mileage. It packs 490 (or 495 with the Z51 package) horses along with 465 lb-ft of torque. But we've heard from the Corvette Club and other places that the C5s and C6s could get over 30 mpg at a reasonable speed on a highway jaunt.

And we're guessing customers don't expect that either, as evidenced by most of them picking the less-efficient ride. We're also guessing some of those customers will trade in their base C8s for the even-less-efficient but more fun Z06 Corvette. That will get a 600-or-so-hp, twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter flat-plane-crank V8 returning far fewer miles per gallon.

That more powerful Corvette will debut on October 26, and the EPA will only have one configuration to base its calculations on. The flat-plane-crank V8 Mustang GT350, though not turbocharged, got 14 mpg city and 21 mpg on the highway, we're betting the boosted Z06 is less than 20 at high speeds.

Regardless, we doubt this will put a damper on Corvette demand, as Chevy is selling every one it can produce from here to Australia. Chevy will begin production of the 2022 Corvette starting this month.