Chassis Masters: 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray / Cadillac CTS General Motors gets the handling religion.

The numbers car: It looks great on paper, and then you drive it. Though able to bruise internal organs during acceleration, braking, and cornering tests, the numbers car is usually too anodyne and too remote to foster lasting relationships with serious drivers. In most cases, it’s not much fun unless it’s at a test track doing the one thing it does well—generating numbers. Numbers might not lie, but sometimes they skip to the last page.

GM has built its share of number generators in the past. But subordinating the feel of a car to raw metrics doesn’t lead to great cars, just great Excel files. Judging from the new Cadillac CTS and Chevrolet Corvette, GM now knows how to bridge the gap between the driver and the spreadsheet. These cars aren’t simply about the cold pursuit of data. They’re about the interaction between human and machine.

So what separates a numbers car from a driver’s car? Steering feel, for a start. Steering tells the story of the car in motion, and in the Corvette it reports the squirm of the tires and, by varying the resistance, every tenth-of-a-g change in cornering force. Information pulses through even more staccato in the CTS, if you can believe it, but the Corvette’s steering is hugely improved over its C6 predecessor’s.

Second, the suspension tune has to harmonize with the steering for the car to feel right. Engineers have to find the ideal spring, damper, anti-roll-bar, and bushing calibrations so the body and suspension react in concert with the driver’s inputs. Add a structure stiff enough to let the suspension do its job and a gearbox that spurs on the engine, and you have a car that will provoke stupid grins every time you drive it.

It is true that previous Corvettes came alive and got talkative when pushed to the edge. While the Corvette was doing anything else, though, such as fetching take-out Thai food, the controls went mute. But the new C7 is talking up a storm.

The thing is just so well honed. Not only is its electrically assisted steering system unexpectedly sensitive, you can practically feel the thousands of man-hours spent developing its Michelin tires, its stiffer structure, and, on Z51 models, its electronically controlled limited-slip differential. Even on narrower rubber, the C7 has grip figures on par with the outgoing Z06. So, okay, numbers aren’t totally irrelevant. They’re just not everything.

The Cadillac hasn’t quite made the same leap as the Corvette, but it didn’t have to. The CTS has always been the Cadillac for people who prefer solid handling to landau roofs. At its birth in ’03, however, the CTS seemed to prioritize numbers ahead of the driving experience. What’s unusual about the CTS is that it represents GM persevering against its worst, most empirically driven instincts, methodically evolving the car’s mechanicals and ladling on more feel with each generation. Yes, the General has flirted with putting experience ahead of the numbers before, but it never took. Remember the Oldsmobile Achieva SCX, Cutlass Calais 442 W41, and the Chevrolet Citation X-11? No? That’s because GM stopped suckling those sales runts. But the General has stuck with the CTS, making each successive model a more refined and entertaining sports sedan. The CTS is now unequivocally the best-handling car in the mid-size luxury segment.

Ironically, by focusing less on the numbers and more on tactile sensations, GM has achieved a rare numerical feat: two cars on our 10Best list.

GM manufactures more than a million Gen-V V-8s for its cars and trucks each year at three North American plants. All these engines have modern aluminum construction, direct injection, and variable cam timing. While the Corvette’s 6.2-liter LT1 version has special features, such as header-like exhaust manifolds and (optional) dry-sump lubrication, its architecture is common to the Gen-V family, enabling huge economies of scale.

By GM’s measurements, the LT1 is 40 pounds lighter and 4.3 inches shorter in height than BMW’s twin-turbo DOHC 4.4-liter V-8, which produces comparable power and torque. The LT1’s oft-disparaged pushrod valve­train saves more than 150 parts and significant cost. Figure on more than $25 saved on valves alone for each LT1 engine.

To slip a light and stiff aluminum space frame under all 2014 Corvettes instead of just the elite Z06 and ZR1 editions, GM moved the construction of that vital part in-house. A new, $52 million line at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, uses robots and automated laser welding to nearly eliminate the human aspect from this phase of the manufacturing process.

Corvette supplier Plasan Carbon Composites invented a “hot oil pressure press system” that the firm’s chief technology officer, Gary Lownsdale, calls, “the first major step toward mass production of carbon-fiber components.” Compared with traditional autoclave molding and curing techniques, the new methodology reduces process time by 75 percent—from 90 minutes to just 17 per part. Corvette hood and roof panels come out of their molds with such high quality that robots can be used for trimming and scuffing. The faster curing and 80-percent reduction in finishing time yield a 30-percent cost reduction.

To reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining every last Corvette part in inventory, Chevrolet hired Brembo to build C7 corner modules for just-in-time delivery to Bowling Green. Brembo gathers these subassemblies—including the suspension knuckles, wheel hubs, brakes, speed sensors, and other parts in the Corvette’s wheel wells—and delivers them to the plant in batches of four modules per car. But this is one cost savings that’s not exclusive to Corvette: Brembo has been supplying Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Porsche with corner modules for years.