First Test: 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1
Mind Blowing: The Incredible Numbers -- 200.5 MPH Top Speed Included -- From the Most Powerful Production Car in GM History
Arthur St. Antoine/ MotorTrend
Prepare to be humiliated. If, that is, you're a sports-car maker other than Chevrolet. Call it what you will -- "Blue Devil," "King of the Hill," even "Steve" -- the all-new 2009 Corvette ZR1 is a world-beater. We've just spent a breathless week with the supercharged beast, the most powerful GM production car ever, and we've got all the numbers -- observed top speed included.
If you're easily frightened, now would be a good time to tune to another channel.
Drive a 600-horsepower Dodge Viper SRT-10? Better move out of the way, bub. Launched well (and that means enough revs to keep the blown 6.2L V-8 from bogging but not so many revs that you simply whirl the rear tires into black jam), the 638-horse ZR1 blitzes from 0 to 60 miles per hour in a scalding 3.3 sec (versus 3.7 for the Dodge). Once those huge rear 335/25ZR-20 Michelin Sport PS2s are well and truly hooked up, though, the ZR1 really gets down and dirty. The quarter-mile flashes by in just 11.2 seconds at a trap speed of 130.5 mph (at that point the Viper is doing 124.4 mph). By the second half of the quarter-mile, the ZR1 is running away from almost every other automobile we've ever tested. The sound? Imagine an IndyCar being flat-footed around the Brickyard by a screaming Sam Kinison.
Is the ZR1 still pulling hard? Does Ben & Jerry's molest waistlines? The world offers few roads long or open enough to legally push this four-wheeled ICBM to its top speed, but we found a good stage for the ZR1's main event: the five-mile banked oval at Chrysler's Arizona Proving Grounds. With former IndyCar driver and Daytona 24 Hours winner Didier Theys at the helm, and with Mother Nature taunting our troupe with 25-mph wind gusts, the ZR1 screamed around the circuit at a wind-corrected Vmax of 200.5 miles per hour. "Very nice, very stable at speed," said Theys with Belgian accent and shoulder-shrugging nonchalance. "No problem."
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