Ken
Gone but not forgotten
CORVETTE Z-06 GOES OUT ON TOP
John Gilbert, Budgeteer News
Last Updated: Friday, April 09th, 2004 01:47:47 PM
Driving a Corvette — any Corvette — is always something special. Riding in one is nowhere near as good, but it’s still not bad. The year 2004 will go down as a big one in Corvette history, and you can be the judge about whether it might also carry an asterisk for the public-relations blunder of the decade.
This is an exciting time for Corvette lovers everywhere, because we are in the final months of the outgoing C5 Corvette and preparing for its long-awaited replacement, the entirely revised and restyled C6 Corvette, which will start showing up by the end of summer. There is some controversy about the new car, because it’s slightly shorter, slightly more compact, and it no longer has flip-up headlights, but shines its lights through clear lens-covers, a fact some traditionalists are having difficulty accepting.
Last week, I was able to get my test-driving paws on a 2004 ’Vette, which is the last version of the outgoing model. But it wasn’t “just” a Corvette. It was the Z-06 version, which is the bubble-top hardtop instead of the fastback or convertible, and it has been lightened and tuned for speed and power.
In straight stock form, the Corvette’s 5.7-liter V8 churns out 350 horsepower, an impressive tally. But in Z-06 form, the badge on the sides of the car themselves indicate the specially tuned 5.7 V8 has 405 horsepower, and just about the same number for foot-pounds of torque. It also will sprint from 0-60 in 4.3 seconds, and will deliver an estimated mid-20 range for miles per gallon.
Just before I got into this Corvette, I was invited to Indianapolis to take in the major announcement that Chevrolet would provide the Corvette as the pace car for the 88th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 30. That is a prestigious event, even in these diminished-interest times when the feud between open-wheeled race factions in the United States has vitally wounded the sport.
Still, the chance to get to Indianapolis in time to get an early close-up view of the all-new Corvette was impossible to resist. And that was before I realized we’d meet with Chevy executives at St. Elmo’s Steak House for a fabulous steak, and the legendary shrimp cocktail with its eye-popping horseradish sauce. That, too, would have been impossible to resist. Together, it was quite a combination.
Somewhere between the shrimp and the steak, we talked a lot about the new car and about how much plotting and planning was invested before Chevrolet decided to go with a new version of the 50-plus-year-old pushrod V8, or switch over to something that could be called the “Indy” engine, with dual overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder. Chevy decided to stick with the old engine, but it built it up to a full 6-liter displacement to get 400 horsepower.
So out at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the next morning, we met with track owner and president Tony George himself, and he and some Chevy executives pulled the shroud off the lurking Corvette. Underneath, in radiant paint schemes, sat a Corvette convertible with gleaming white nose and racy red and blue stripes and stars cascading back in a form that made the thing look like it’s going 150 even while parked.
There was just one problem. As I gazed upon the Corvette, I realized it’s flip- up headlights were closed, and that closed (or open) flip-ups meant that this was the current car — the decade-old, outgoing model, due to have production halted within a week or two of the Indy 500. It’s true. General Motors chose to use the outgoing car, rather than make an enormous splash with the all-new, 2005, C6 model Corvette for all the world to see.
I asked one public relations man about the decision, and he assured me that it was planned to pay tribute to the outgoing car, because it has meant so much to Chevrolet. A second PR type said the same thing. So did a third. However, being unconvinced, I found a fourth public relations executive and, playing dumb, asked about why it seemed logical to me that the new car would be the pace car. He said, “You’re right. We just couldn’t get enough new cars in production by then.”
So much for the corporate doubletalk. It turns out, the selected pace car has to have a few dozen replicas for use by bigshots during the month of May leading up to the race. But while there might have been a shortage, it still seemed to me that Chevy could have put two new Corvettes on the track and let the celebrities “suffer” along with the old car. But, what do I know?
The assembled automotive journalists got a chance to ride — not drive — on a couple of hot laps with some selected Indy race drivers. I climbed aboard with Robbie Buhl, who did a great job of narrating the strategy drivers use on a typical lap. The 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not like any ordinary oval. It’s more like a long race track with four distinctly different corners. We went hard, 120 miles per hour or so, and Buhl turned down into Turn 1, up to the wall in the short chute, then down into Turn 2, remarking how the wind hits your car at that point, which can make it pretty wiggly as you go onto the back stretch.
It was a thrill, roaring into Turn 3 and Turn 4 and then zooming down the main straightaway in front of the big grandstand. But I still couldn’t get away from the thought that the new Corvette would still have made more sense.
Shortly after that, I got the new 2004 Corvette. And in a week of hustling around cities and highways, I had to acknowledge that there is no penalty for being in the outgoing model.
The Z-06 version has Goodyear F1 tires, which may stick like crazy, but they also transmit some noise. Same with the extra-light body, which seems to transmit that noise. The stiffer suspension means that you feel every highway joint-strip. But, all in all, you don’t mind any of those nuisance factors, just as you don’t mind the effort required to lower yourself at a jaunty angle to climb down and into the ‘Vette.
At $50,000, the Z-06 is the hottest version, and with 405 horsepower will have even more than the new car’s standard 400 horsepower. The seats are comfortable, the steering position is good, and everything works with exciting flair. Except, that is, for the transmission.
This has been an ongoing element of disagreement between Chevrolet and me for almost a decade now. In order to get around the fuel-economy tests and/or emission tests years ago, Chevy came up with this idea to misdirect your stick shift to go from first to fourth if you didn’t have the proper revs going. The big engine has enough torque to pull you out of it, but if you’re a second-gear zealot like I am, you want to be in second without having to go from first to fourth and then arm-wrestle the gear shift back up over and down to second.
You can go directly from first to second if you hammer it hard in first, or if you hold your speed in first until a little tip-off “1-to-4” light on the tachometer goes off. It bothers me because I like to start up moderately in first, then hit second and hammer it a little. If you do that, you’ll be in fourth. Another fellow who drove the car told me he thought it shifted perfectly, but he was surprised about how it had no power in second. He was shocked when I told him that he was in fourth, not second.
Anyhow, the point is the Corvette gets surprisingly good fuel economy. So it’s time to ditch the skip-shift. Besides, it’s about the only glitch I could find in the Corvette, and it is a big enough nuisance that it would prevent me from buying one, even if I was a Corvette zealot.
We can only assume that the new C6 Corvette will have solved that issue, but we’ll have to wait until the end of summer to find out, apparently. Until then, we can be satisfied with the outgoing C5 Corvette. With all the other things it has going for it, the outgoing Corvette will leave its domain as the top U.S. sports car in perfect condition for its successor.
John Gilbert writes weekly auto columns. He can be reached at jgilbert@duluth.com
John Gilbert, Budgeteer News
Last Updated: Friday, April 09th, 2004 01:47:47 PM
Driving a Corvette — any Corvette — is always something special. Riding in one is nowhere near as good, but it’s still not bad. The year 2004 will go down as a big one in Corvette history, and you can be the judge about whether it might also carry an asterisk for the public-relations blunder of the decade.
This is an exciting time for Corvette lovers everywhere, because we are in the final months of the outgoing C5 Corvette and preparing for its long-awaited replacement, the entirely revised and restyled C6 Corvette, which will start showing up by the end of summer. There is some controversy about the new car, because it’s slightly shorter, slightly more compact, and it no longer has flip-up headlights, but shines its lights through clear lens-covers, a fact some traditionalists are having difficulty accepting.
Last week, I was able to get my test-driving paws on a 2004 ’Vette, which is the last version of the outgoing model. But it wasn’t “just” a Corvette. It was the Z-06 version, which is the bubble-top hardtop instead of the fastback or convertible, and it has been lightened and tuned for speed and power.
In straight stock form, the Corvette’s 5.7-liter V8 churns out 350 horsepower, an impressive tally. But in Z-06 form, the badge on the sides of the car themselves indicate the specially tuned 5.7 V8 has 405 horsepower, and just about the same number for foot-pounds of torque. It also will sprint from 0-60 in 4.3 seconds, and will deliver an estimated mid-20 range for miles per gallon.
Just before I got into this Corvette, I was invited to Indianapolis to take in the major announcement that Chevrolet would provide the Corvette as the pace car for the 88th running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 30. That is a prestigious event, even in these diminished-interest times when the feud between open-wheeled race factions in the United States has vitally wounded the sport.
Still, the chance to get to Indianapolis in time to get an early close-up view of the all-new Corvette was impossible to resist. And that was before I realized we’d meet with Chevy executives at St. Elmo’s Steak House for a fabulous steak, and the legendary shrimp cocktail with its eye-popping horseradish sauce. That, too, would have been impossible to resist. Together, it was quite a combination.
Somewhere between the shrimp and the steak, we talked a lot about the new car and about how much plotting and planning was invested before Chevrolet decided to go with a new version of the 50-plus-year-old pushrod V8, or switch over to something that could be called the “Indy” engine, with dual overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder. Chevy decided to stick with the old engine, but it built it up to a full 6-liter displacement to get 400 horsepower.
So out at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway the next morning, we met with track owner and president Tony George himself, and he and some Chevy executives pulled the shroud off the lurking Corvette. Underneath, in radiant paint schemes, sat a Corvette convertible with gleaming white nose and racy red and blue stripes and stars cascading back in a form that made the thing look like it’s going 150 even while parked.
There was just one problem. As I gazed upon the Corvette, I realized it’s flip- up headlights were closed, and that closed (or open) flip-ups meant that this was the current car — the decade-old, outgoing model, due to have production halted within a week or two of the Indy 500. It’s true. General Motors chose to use the outgoing car, rather than make an enormous splash with the all-new, 2005, C6 model Corvette for all the world to see.
I asked one public relations man about the decision, and he assured me that it was planned to pay tribute to the outgoing car, because it has meant so much to Chevrolet. A second PR type said the same thing. So did a third. However, being unconvinced, I found a fourth public relations executive and, playing dumb, asked about why it seemed logical to me that the new car would be the pace car. He said, “You’re right. We just couldn’t get enough new cars in production by then.”
So much for the corporate doubletalk. It turns out, the selected pace car has to have a few dozen replicas for use by bigshots during the month of May leading up to the race. But while there might have been a shortage, it still seemed to me that Chevy could have put two new Corvettes on the track and let the celebrities “suffer” along with the old car. But, what do I know?
The assembled automotive journalists got a chance to ride — not drive — on a couple of hot laps with some selected Indy race drivers. I climbed aboard with Robbie Buhl, who did a great job of narrating the strategy drivers use on a typical lap. The 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not like any ordinary oval. It’s more like a long race track with four distinctly different corners. We went hard, 120 miles per hour or so, and Buhl turned down into Turn 1, up to the wall in the short chute, then down into Turn 2, remarking how the wind hits your car at that point, which can make it pretty wiggly as you go onto the back stretch.
It was a thrill, roaring into Turn 3 and Turn 4 and then zooming down the main straightaway in front of the big grandstand. But I still couldn’t get away from the thought that the new Corvette would still have made more sense.
Shortly after that, I got the new 2004 Corvette. And in a week of hustling around cities and highways, I had to acknowledge that there is no penalty for being in the outgoing model.
The Z-06 version has Goodyear F1 tires, which may stick like crazy, but they also transmit some noise. Same with the extra-light body, which seems to transmit that noise. The stiffer suspension means that you feel every highway joint-strip. But, all in all, you don’t mind any of those nuisance factors, just as you don’t mind the effort required to lower yourself at a jaunty angle to climb down and into the ‘Vette.
At $50,000, the Z-06 is the hottest version, and with 405 horsepower will have even more than the new car’s standard 400 horsepower. The seats are comfortable, the steering position is good, and everything works with exciting flair. Except, that is, for the transmission.
This has been an ongoing element of disagreement between Chevrolet and me for almost a decade now. In order to get around the fuel-economy tests and/or emission tests years ago, Chevy came up with this idea to misdirect your stick shift to go from first to fourth if you didn’t have the proper revs going. The big engine has enough torque to pull you out of it, but if you’re a second-gear zealot like I am, you want to be in second without having to go from first to fourth and then arm-wrestle the gear shift back up over and down to second.
You can go directly from first to second if you hammer it hard in first, or if you hold your speed in first until a little tip-off “1-to-4” light on the tachometer goes off. It bothers me because I like to start up moderately in first, then hit second and hammer it a little. If you do that, you’ll be in fourth. Another fellow who drove the car told me he thought it shifted perfectly, but he was surprised about how it had no power in second. He was shocked when I told him that he was in fourth, not second.
Anyhow, the point is the Corvette gets surprisingly good fuel economy. So it’s time to ditch the skip-shift. Besides, it’s about the only glitch I could find in the Corvette, and it is a big enough nuisance that it would prevent me from buying one, even if I was a Corvette zealot.
We can only assume that the new C6 Corvette will have solved that issue, but we’ll have to wait until the end of summer to find out, apparently. Until then, we can be satisfied with the outgoing C5 Corvette. With all the other things it has going for it, the outgoing Corvette will leave its domain as the top U.S. sports car in perfect condition for its successor.
John Gilbert writes weekly auto columns. He can be reached at jgilbert@duluth.com