Vette ZR-1 Motive Mag and C&D first drives

I know I know, it's still a corvette, but it sounds like it has a few tricks up its sleeve. Which it better for 100 grand !!



Naturally, a man-eating track you've never seen before is just the place you want to be in a 638-hp Corvette you've never driven before.

Speaking of Corvettes, our February 2008 cover story on the new supercharged ZR1 all but supplied you with blueprints to build your own. Hoping to squeeze the slavering media like ripe kumquats for more ink, GM invited us to the Lutzring for a brief half-day nibble of the $105,000 ZR1 before the full feast of testing commences this fall. Obviously, the gambit worked.

The track's nefarious reputation notwithstanding, the ZR1 is just the aluminum-frame, carbon-fiber-paneled, balsa-wood-floored Corvette Z06 with afterburners, right? Which means it will be a little vague in the steering and a bit floppy at the apex but basically fun and, above all, safe. Turn up the A/C, tune in the XM, and let the electronics make us heroes on a track where something like 265,984 people dare not tread.



The number of production cars with 600-plus horsepower can be counted on less than two hands, and none of them, with the exception of the Bugatti Veyron or the Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG, are as refined or as easy to drive as the Corvette ZR1. Odd words considering that the Corvette has long had all the style and sophistication of an Applebee's. But this car is more than just a raw-boned Viper-beater; it's an emblem of Chevy's commitment to the Corvette, to giving it the same kind of diversity and range as the Porsche 911. If the C6 is America's Carrera 2, then the ZR1 is its GT2, with the performance, drivability, and integrity that implies.