Thrashing the Z06 in the U.K.The first batch of U.K. specification '06 Z06s were released by Corvette Europe in January, and one of them is now sitting proudly in my showroom. It's waiting for its new owner, a Scottish oil-man, to return from the Middle East and then drive it 600 miles up north to Aberdeen where it will be added to his collection of supercars.
The new 7-liter Corvette has made a real impact here in Europe, and it brings back strong memories of exactly 40 years ago when an English automotive magazine borrowed a '66 427 L72 425hp convertible. It was immediately the fastest accelerating production car that they had ever tested, and the results were a sensation-as I recall 0-60 in 5.5 seconds and 0-100 mph in less than 11 seconds.
This Corvette 427 of forty years ago offered an entirely new approach to the performance car, and it was in complete contrast to the European competition. Cars such as the Aston Martins DB6 or Ferrari 275GTB were bought by successful and wealthy older men, typically to drive from Paris or Rome to their summer homes at Monaco, Nice, or Venice. Even if never used for this purpose, this was the image, together with fine suits and leather driving gloves on walnut steering wheels and ladies with expensive handbags.
The Corvette buyer in 1966 was twenty-four, not fifty-four, and the Corvette was a car for fun, not for long and romantic drives between capital cities. The Ferraris may have been V-12s, but they were less than 300 ci, as was the six-cylinder Jaguar XKE, which was the closest that any of the European cars approached the youthful image of the American Corvette.
In 2006, the U.K. market has matured, and being so close to Europe, we have a far larger choice of brands and models than the U.S., and a vast choice of performance cars to challenge the C6 Corvette. But despite this, the new 427 Z06 has dominated the performance car magazines because-just like that 425hp 427 back in 1966-it is mechanically completely different from its direct rivals and sells for about half their price. Chevrolet has done a truly magnificent job of promoting the car by winning the GT1 class at almost every LeMans 24-hour race this century. At about 61,000 U.K. pounds ($105,000 U.S.), it costs the same as a normally aspirated Range Rover HSE and ten thousand pounds less than the supercharged version of the British-made 4x4 or the Cayenne Turbo. It is not surprising then that the Z06 is sold out all over Europe. you pay just $75,000 for the very same British-made Range Rover that costs us the equivalent of $105,000.
Five hundred and five brake horsepower is an awesome amount of power, but what really impresses the Brits is it is delivered by a simple and honest pushrod V-8 with just two valves per cylinder. At 1,420 kg, it is incredibly light, weighing the same as the little 3.8-liter Porsche Carrera S, less than the Ferrari F430, and a full 300 pounds less than the beautiful new 4.2-liter Aston Martin V-8 Vantage.
What impresses me with the two examples I have tried so far is the 475 lb-ft of torque. This is more than the 460 lb-ft of the legendary '66 car, but still short of the 500 lb-ft of the '70 LS5. Torque like this flattens steep hills and makes gear shifting optional. Evo magazine was amazed that the Z06 would drive from walking speed to 170 mph in Fourth gear, but that's what you can do with this much torque. As children, my brothers and I used to sweat as we pushed our bikes up steep Chalford Hill in the Cotswolds, and later thrilled to racing up it in our Minis in first and sometimes second gear. It was amazing when I showed how my first LS5 would climb it in fourth gear, and I don't doubt that the bigger but 300-pound lighter Z06 would do it too, while driving almost twice as far on a gallon of gas as that much missed Elkhart Green '70 coupe.
More comfortable and easier to drive than the C5 Z06, this is a car that is useable daily, but will do 198 mph in still air or presumably 200 mph with a light tailwind. I keep looking at the blue Z06 parked opposite my workstation, fascinated by those stunning flares over the rear wheels, loving the upper nose duct and the rear brake ducts. We all like the new-for-2006 three-spoke steering wheel, now reduced to 14 inches-the smallest Corvette airbag wheel yet. The European export version has some cool extra features too, not the least is the 320-mph speedo; the extra 20 mph over the normal 300-mph face of the export C6 is needed to accommodate the top speed of the car when this instrument is switched to kilometers per hour. U.S. specification cars can also be switched to metric for driving and selling in Canada, but don't need to read past 200 kmh because that vast and lovely country has a more restrictive attitude to speeding than does Germany. Everyone admires the enormous six-pot front calipers, drilled brake rotors as big as English dustbin lids, the massive back wheels, and the first rear-mounted battery since 1982. It is nice to pretend that this change is there for better weight distribution, but it has to be put back there because the dry sump oil canister displaced it.
Dry sump oiling is a real double bonus. No more starved main bearings on high-G bends during track days . . . and another Porsche exclusive bites the dust!
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