Cars in the Wild

Even over my cell phone’s weak, tinny speakers, the Corvette’s supercharged V8 sounds all lumpy and cammed and gorgeous. “Dad, you HAVE to listen to this.” He huddles over the phone along with my cousin Jared as I hit ‘Play’. In the video, the striking blue ‘Vette idles with a heavy snarl, then exhales under revs with a tearing, ripping bellow and slows idles back down into a meaty whubwhubwhubwhub. “Oh man. That car sounds like it’s about 200 feet deep,” he says through a grin.

The standard Corvette needs no introduction, but I think this model does. Pictured here is the seventh-generation (C7) Stingray Z06, the first ‘Vette to wear the ‘Stingray’ badge since the third-generation car in 1976, and the most powerful car General Motors has ever produced. Reserved especially for Corvettes, the Z06 moniker derives from a long lineage of hot Corvettes dating back to the mid-1960’s, and denotes the cream of Chevy’s performance know-how. When a one of these cars rolls by with that badge, it means something special. This particular Z06 is adorned with the (confusingly named) Z07 package, and makes a crazy 650 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque from its 6.2-liter supercharged V8 engine. Give it the beans, and the Z06 rips from zero to 60 mph in three seconds dead, and abuses the quarter-mile run in just over 11 seconds. I don’t care what definition you use, this is a really, really fast car. If you opt to spec your car out in Z07 trim, things get even more wild – it transforms into a fully operational battle station, complete with carbon-ceramic brakes, carbon fiber body panels and aero kit, super sticky tires, and a revised suspension setup.

In the flesh, the Z06 is so aggressively styled it’s actually a little intimidating – give it a sideways glance and it’s easy to imagine the ‘Vette whipping out a switchblade and wanting to start some trouble. It’s all wide hips, big wheels, scoops, cuts, and wings. There is no confusing this car with a wannabe track toy. Every opening on the Z06 is functional – the carbon-fiber slats on the hood suck heat away from the engine, the front splitter pushes the nose of the car into the pavement, while the vertical wing out back keeps the rear tires planted at speed, and the various other holes and protrusions funnel cool air to where it’s needed most.

With the Z06, Chevy took the already capable Corvette platform and slathered on every go-fast bin in the warehouse to create not just a fast Corvette, but a world-class supercar that can hang with (or embarrass) the best cars in the world. The Z06 looks the business, has the performance to back it up, and arrives with zero pretensions of dominance, because dominance is already understood. Poseurs will inevitably buy this car, as they do with any car of this magnitude, but the essence of the Z06 is pure: it’s a supercar that demands skill and respect to extract it’s true performance. It also represents the rare but wonderful occurrence where a global behemoth like GM shows what it is capable of by setting the bureaucracy aside, buckling up, and putting the pedal to the freaking metal.