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“Greater Than 620 Horsepower”
All right, so there’s one thing that we can’t put a final figure to and that’s the important one: the ZR1’s power output.

But Ron Meegan, the assistant chief engineer for the new 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1’s supercharged V8 (and formerly a member of the original ZR-1’s engine team from 1990-’95), says he expects that once the new car’s supercharged 6.2-liter V8 is certified, it will produce “greater than 620 horsepower at 6,500 rpm and 595 pound-feet of torque in the 3,600-to-4,000-rpm range, depending on some last-minute tuning items.”

So even GM doesn’t have a final power figure yet. Although you can be sure that if Meegan’s superiors allowed him to mention any figure to us, they’re not worried about making those numbers. Remember, when the current-generation Z06 was unveiled, it came with a claim of 500 hp, and when the production car arrived it had a rating of 505 hp.

Whether the ZR1 is rated at 625 hp or 633 hp or whatever, it won’t just be the most powerful Corvette production vehicle ever (including ones measured by the grossly overstated “SAE gross” figures of pre-1972), it won’t even be close. The power produced by the ZR1’s LS9 engine will be roughly the equivalent of three 1980s-era Corvette small-block V8s bolted together. It’ll produce more power than the Corvette C6.R that races at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The Nordschleife on Chrome Rims, Y’all
ZR1 chief engineer Tadge Juechter says, “If a buyer really wants them, he can get chrome wheels on it,” although he’s letting us know that he would never do such a thing and he thinks you shouldn’t either. But the ZR1 isn’t a racecar.

Think of the Corvette lineup in Porsche 911 terms. The base coupe and convertible Corvette are analogous to the standard Carrera and Carrera S. The Z06 is the GT3 — the loud, hard-core choice of the performance junkie. The ZR1 is the Porsche Turbo. It’s devastatingly fast, but it’s also intended to be civilized. It’s available with a head-up instrument display, power-adjustable seats, high-end audio and Delphi’s smooth-riding MagneRide suspension dampers. It’s no raw-boned racer. Hell, at 3,300 to 3,400 pounds, the ZR1 is almost 300 pounds heavier than a Z06.

Juechter adds, “It’s sort of like the Turbo but for less money and with performance — more like the Carrera GT.”

That’s big talk. But, while Chevrolet is not yet making specific performance claims, Juechter notes that the ZR1 will be faster, quicker and more responsive in every way than a Z06. “You won’t see a huge difference in 0-60 mph because even the Z06 is traction-limited through most of that,” he says. “But in the quarter-mile and tests from zero to 100 mph to zero, there will be big differences.”

And just to up the ZR1’s chest-puffing quotient, Juechter notes this car “will be able to take the production-car track record at any racetrack.” Ex-squeeze me? And no, the company has not done an officially timed run at the Nürburgring yet.

As for top speed, Juechter says only that the 200-mph speedometer of the standard and Z06 Corvettes has been replaced with a 220-mph unit, because the standard one is “grossly inadequate.”

Hot Wheels
By now you probably have noticed that the ZR1 looks like, well, a C6 Corvette. The silhouette is, of course, the same and the overall dimensions are essentially identical to a Z06.

But there’s a goodly helping of racecar bluster applied to this vehicle. It’s hard to miss the hole in the hood that measures roughly 19 by 16 inches, for example. A clear polycarbonate window lets you see the intercooler cover with its fancy script. This is the ZR1’s signature styling flourish. Truth be told, it’s a bit Hot Wheels for our tastes. The hood is made from carbon fiber, and while the exterior has been painted, the underside retains its carbon-fiber’s undressed matte finish.

The front fenders with their ZR1-specific twin-port gills are also made from carbon fiber. The prominent aerodynamic front splitter is — you guessed it! — carbon fiber. It sticks out proud of the nose by 4 inches at the edges, making it a dandy place to rest your Hummel figurine collection. Clear-coated carbon rocker extensions make the vehicle look almost subterranean. The top and B-pillar are covered in clear-coated panels of the stuff as well. This car will look wicked in black.

According to Juechter, GM has used a special super-secret additive to the clear coat to protect the unpainted carbon from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. (UV rays can break down the resin that helps give carbon fiber its stiffness.) He claims that the substance costs $60,000 per gallon. But since the clearcoat needs only 3 percent of the stuff, the resulting clearcoat costs merely an absurd $2,000 per gallon. This mystery material was originally designed to protect circuit boards from UV. Juechter acknowledges only that the substance has no chemical similarity to mayonnaise and says, “We should probably not imply that it is edible anyway.”

The front aero splitter is matched in the rear by a spoiler of a relatively modest height that is taller at the edges than in the center, a measure to combine an optimum balance between a decrease in aerodynamic lift and an increase in aerodynamic drag.

The wheels are a new design produced by Speedline, measuring 20-by-12 inches in the rear and 19-by-10 inches up front. They are covered (barely) by Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 tires, specifically formulated for this vehicle. At 335/R2520, the rear tires resemble something you might find in a steamroller; the fronts are a not-much-more-modest 285/R3019.

The interior is essentially identical to the regular Corvette. ZR1 badging and a boost gauge in place of the voltmeter are the only changes to the cabin.

Traction Limited
Even with the gigantic meats bolted to the backside, the ZR1 will be what is euphemistically called “traction limited.” In other words, all that power just goes up into expensive smoke when you try to lay the power down.

And since launching a car with so much horsepower can become a violent, axle-hopping mess, Chevrolet has come up with two novel countermeasures.

First are the rear shocks. When you’re stopped and the clutch pedal is depressed and you pile on some revs, the car assumes you want to launch it hard. It automatically softens the compression damping of the rear shocks, and this allows the rear end to squat and effectively shift more weight to the rear of the car for added traction. At the same time, the rebound damping of the rear shocks goes up to 99 percent of full stiffness. This means that the rear cannot spring back up under power in the up-and-down monkey motion of axle hop.

All this is perhaps the cleverest use of adjustable shocks that we’ve ever heard of. Also, according to Juechter, the standard magnetic shocks allow the ZR1 chassis team to use softer springs than the Z06 for a more compliant ride. To further mitigate power hop, Chevy has also fitted the ZR1 with axle half-shafts of different diameters (33mm on the right and 40mm on the left).

We’ll see how all of this works next year when we finally get to drive the thing. We might just try a hard launch or, you know, several.

Stop, I Say
There should be no dispute about the effectiveness of the ZR1’s brakes. The rotors are as large as or larger than most wheels were just a decade ago.

In what must be a very sweet moment for a longtime Corvette engineer, Juechter notes that the monster 15-inch Brembo carbon-ceramic rotors fitted as standard to the ZR1’s rear wheels are the brakes originally designed for the front of Ferrari’s 650-hp Enzo supercar. In the front of the ZR1, you’ll find even larger 15.5-inch carbon-ceramic units.

Juechter says, “The only vehicle I know of that has these brakes as standard equipment is the 1,000-hp Bugatti Veyron.” Then he adds with a grin, “Although I think you can get them as a $20,000 option on the Ferrari 599.” We get the sense Juechter will be using these laugh lines many, many times in the near future.

The Price of Production
Chevrolet isn’t about to tell us the price it intends to charge for the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. But it tells us that the prime motivator for the project has been GM honcho Rick Wagoner, who asked, “What would a $100,000 Corvette look like?” The ZR1 is apparently the answer and we expect the car’s list price will be near enough to the $100,000 mark.

Chevy says it is constrained by production of the carbon-fiber bits to only 2,000 ZR1s per year, and since it seems to us as if we’ve met almost as many Corvette nuts in our career with the funds to bid up the price significantly, we think the list price might be strictly academic in the first year’s production.

So that’s it. There’s no more mystery Corvette. We’ll have to just go ahead and go through the arduous task of driving the thing and testing it.

Shortly thereafter we’ll begin speculating on the C7 Corvette and the circle of life will continue.

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Call Todd Sommer at 1-866-413-3513 for more details

The ZR1 is the most expensive and most powerful production Corvette in history, with a price of about 100 grand ($110,000 for the loaded 4LZ trim level) and an estimated 620 horsepower at 6500 rpm and 600 pound-feet of torque at 4000 rpm from its supercharged LS9 6.2-liter V-8.

It is the first factory-built Corvette to feature forced induction, and it will also be the first Corvette to top 200 mph off the showroom floor. The idea that such a Vette could exist is certifiably bonkers.

The Heart of the Beast

Spearheading the myriad mutations needed to turn a run-of-the-mill Corvette into a ZR1 is, of course, that blown hunk of aluminum residing between the front wheels. Contrary to what you might think, the LS9 isn’t based on the Z06’s 7.0-liter LS7 but rather the base Vette’s 6.2-liter LS3 (the LS3 has 76-percent carryover parts) with which it shares a 4.06-inch bore and a 3.62-inch stroke. The LS7’s cylinder walls were deemed too thin to reliably handle the extra grunt of the supercharger. The LS9 has been validated to 150,000 hours and had no piston, rod, or crank failure in 6800 cumulative dyno hours. The hand-assembled engines come from GM’s Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan, and each one is hot-tested before it goes out the door.

The all-new blower is provided by Eaton and is the sixth in its series of Roots-type superchargers. This Twin Vortices Series rides between the cylinder banks, making max boost of 10.5 psi, and Chevy claims an increase in efficiency and noise reduction over past superchargers. An air-to-liquid intercooler sits on top of the supercharger. By lowering the engine inside the car, engineers were able to avoid the telltale hood bulge required for most superchargers. As a result, hood height only increases an inch, although there is little space between the outside of the hood and the engine.

Other less noticeable changes were made under the hood, too. The LS9’s heads are made of an alloy meant to handle higher temperatures, and they sit on four-layer steel gaskets rather than on the two-layer ones found in the LS3. The intake ports have swirl wings, which increase the efficiency of the combustion process but unfortunately also cramp airflow. The supercharger’s forced air, however, mitigates the airflow problem, according to Corvette engineers.

The LS9 uses a forged steel crank and pistons and has a lower 9.1:1 compression ratio compared with the 10.7:1 ratio of the LS3. The connecting rods are titanium, like the LS7’s. The LS3 and the LS9 have identical valve diameters, but the blown engine gets titanium intake and sodium-filled steel exhaust valves.

The Rest of the Voodoo

As the LS9 does its work, its many, many ponies invade the transmission, where they encounter a beefed-up six-speed Tremec unit with closer ratios than the one found in the Z06. However, first gear will still be good for 60 mph, ensuring insane performance stats. A dual-plate clutch offers enough feel and modulation, according to Chevy, to make launches a snap. We expect 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds or better and the quarter-mile in 11.0 seconds.

The spring rates have been softened from those of the Z06, and the ZR1 will get as standard equipment the second generation of Delphi’s auto-reactive magnetic shocks tuned to produce a docile ride around town in a car that required a new speedometer to 220 mph. The footwear is fat. The ZR1 gets 285/30-19s up front and 335/25-20s at the rear. By comparison, the Z06 uses 275/35-18s in front and 325/30-19s in the rear. As GM vice-chairman and head of global product development Bob Lutz puts it, “It’s wonderfully easy to drive, but once in it, Clark Kent turns into Superman.”

The Corvette uses the same Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes as the ones found on the million-dollar Bugatti Veyron supercar. Vented and cross-drilled discs measure a whopping 15.5 inches at the front and an even 15 at the back. The front calipers utilize six pistons and the rears four. Essentially, everything was brought up to the level needed to handle the rush of power the car can create, says Lutz.

The ZR1 will likely weigh 150 more pounds than the roughly 3200-pound Z06, despite the liberal use of carbon fiber for the hood—which has a see-through panel in the middle for an excellent view of the top of the intercooler cover—front fenders, sill extensions, front splitter, and roof. The car has eight major panels of carbon fiber compared with six made of other materials. GM says the ZR1 will be first to offer clear-coat carbon-fiber exterior panels designed to last the life of the car. The chemical additive in the clear-coat costs more than $60,000 a gallon, officials say.

The weight gain was inevitable, given all the extra hardware under the hood. “It’s literally like being fired out of a slingshot in a time-warp continuum,” Lutz says, but with stability enhancement to help keep the tail straight when nailing the throttle while exiting a corner.

Production starts in July, and the ZR1 will be on sale in August or September. GM can build about 2000 ZR1s a year with a choice of seven colors. Each car will have a unique VIN that incorporates the sequential build number, which should please collectors.

The Vette to End All Vettes—Literally

Since its launch, the Z06 has always been “the best dollar-for-dollar sports car on the planet,” but that’s kind of like being called the “best pound-for-pound fighter” in boxing. You might be very good, but there are still bigger, stronger opponents out there who’ll knock you flat on your rear. In the case of the Ferrari 599–baiting ZR1, however, it doesn’t look as though we need any qualifiers whatsoever—it’s going to rock, plain and simple.

And with the fear that high-performance vehicles like this may be legislated out of existence in the future because they can’t meet emissions standards, we plan to enjoy every minute we can, just in case.

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