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For two model years America built a pair of homegrown supercars that could embarrass European exotics, and enthusiasts have never agreed on which one did it better. The 2015 Corvette Z06 brought 650 supercharged horsepower and a chassis GM had spent a decade sharpening. The 2016 Viper ACR answered with a naturally aspirated V10 and the most extreme aero package Dodge ever built. Read on to see where each one actually wins.
In 1969 Chevrolet built exactly two Corvettes with the all-aluminum ZL1 427, an engine so far ahead of its time that almost nobody could buy it. Everyone else chose from a lineup running from a 300-horsepower 350 small-block up through a stack of 427 big-blocks, on a car that had just reclaimed the Stingray name. Read on to find out why 1969 was the C3 generation’s real turning point.
For years Shelby’s Cobra had been beating Corvettes on road courses, and by 1966 Chevrolet had run out of patience. The answer was a brand-new 427-cubic-inch big-block, offered in two states of tune, with the top version officially rated at 425 horsepower and widely believed to make more. Only a fraction of 1966 Corvettes were built with it. Read on to find out what the stopwatch said.
The 1987 Corvette’s 5.7-liter L98 looks like a minor running change on paper, but it hid a valvetrain upgrade – roller hydraulic lifters – that did more for performance than the fuel injection system it’s usually credited for. Here’s how Chevrolet finally moved past its awkward Cross-Fire Injection years, and what quietly changed inside the engine that year.
A 1972 Chevrolet Corvette with a 454 big block under the hood sounds like a straightforward proposition until you look at what the brochure claimed that year. The same engine that had been advertised at 365 horsepower in 1971 was suddenly rated at 270, and Chevrolet had not touched the hardware. Something else changed instead, and it permanently altered how every American performance car was measured. Read on to find out what happened and why 1972 is a genuine bookend year for the Corvette.
The crew running the Texas Grim Reaper showed up to their first no-prep event with $50,000 on the line and a 522-cubic-inch big block Corvette wearing a screw-type supercharger loud enough to make spectators cover their ears. They made the finals anyway. Here is why that combination works on a surface with no traction compound at all.
By 1965 Chevrolet had already solved the question of how to make a Corvette go fast. The harder problem was stopping it, and the four-wheel disc brakes that arrived that year were so far beyond the drums they replaced that Chevrolet offered buyers a cash credit to refuse them. Almost nobody took it. Then, in March, a 396 big block appeared on the order sheet and changed the conversation entirely. Here is what made 1965 the pivotal Sting Ray year.
Tom Cotter’s Barn Find Hunter tracked down a numbers-matching 1954 Chevrolet Corvette and its original Blue Flame Six engine, tucked into a collection that also holds a 1970 Buick GS Stage 1 convertible, a big-block El Camino, and a warehouse of dusty Italian sports cars including an ASA 1000 GT nicknamed the “baby Ferrari.” Few barn find episodes cover this much ground in one visit. Watch to see what else Cotter uncovers.
Jason Michalak’s Bad9er Racing blown Hemi Corvette runs a 3.97-second eighth mile at 194 miles per hour on a 315 drag radial, setting the quickest elapsed time in Competition class at the Outlaw Street Car Reunion at Memphis International Raceway. It’s an extreme demonstration of how far a Corvette-based platform can be pushed on radial tires rather than full race slicks. Watch to see the run that had viewers doing double takes on just how fast 194 mph really is.
A deluxe leather interior is a nice thing to brag about, but it is not why 1972 matters in Corvette history. This was the last year for the chrome rear bumper, the removable rear window, and the vacuum-operated wiper door, and the last year the LT-1 350 appeared on the order sheet. Read on for what disappeared after 1972, what the horsepower figures actually mean, and why this model year is the quiet end of the early C3.
Chevrolet had two versions of a new 454 big-block ready for the 1970 Corvette, and the wilder one was advertised at 460 horsepower. It never reached a single retail buyer — a labor strike had already shortened the model year and the LS7 was deleted from the order sheet, leaving the 390-horsepower LS5 as the only 454 anyone could actually order. Read on to find out why a Bridgehampton Blue four-speed roadster from that year sits at such an important point in Corvette history.
In 1961 an American designer decided a Corvette was not European enough, so he shipped one to Turin and had Vignale build a new body over it by hand. The result headlined the Paris Salon and landed on magazine covers, and underneath the Italian coachwork it is still fundamentally a C1 Corvette. Here is how the Kelly Corvette came to exist, and why the American-chassis, Italian-body formula was more common than you would think.
Five cars defined 1960s muscle car culture, but two of them have wilder backstories than most people realize: a GTO that exploited a GM loophole to become a 32,450-unit phenomenon, and a Barracuda so rare its Hemi convertible now sells for millions. Here’s what made these five cars the icons they became.
Only twenty buyers checked the box for Chevrolet’s most serious 1967 Corvette engine option, and the horsepower figure on the window sticker was deliberately understated. This custom convertible takes that same idea and reworks it with five decades of engineering the original buyers never had, wrapped in a paint color that did not exist when the car was built. Shark Gray over black, a modified 427 Z06-based engine, and a question every restomod eventually has to answer. Read on for where the line actually sits.