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2006 Corvette Z06: A 500-Horsepower Time Machine
By NORMAN MAYERSOHN
Published: February 5, 2006
THE turnpike exit was not the one I had planned to take, but I found myself at the bottom of the off ramp anyway, waving the E-ZPass tag at the toll booth and merging onto Route 18. Overruling the plan to continue farther south, a Corvette and my subconscious conspired to drop me into a different, but still familiar, landscape.
With no particular timetable or goal — other than to put some miles on the most powerful car Chevrolet has ever built, the 2006 Corvette Z06 — I did not resist. A slight detour took me along a stretch of Highway 9, mythologized by a local singer named Springsteen, and still got me to the Jersey Shore where my exploits with cars began.
Many guys with a few gray hairs — and I seem to have fewer each day — buy Corvettes to revisit their youth, though perhaps not so literally. In many ways, the Z06 is a perfect car for the journey. It has remained true to tradition, still a two-seater with a booming V-8 up front, but now reaches back to the gauzy days of skinny tires and cheap gas with a magic number: 427 cubic inches.
The link is a direct one for me. I drove to college over these roads in my oldest brother's 427 Corvette, a '67 four-speed coupe with three carburetors, a voracious appetite for Sunoco 260 and altogether too much power for a newly licensed teenager.
The Z06 option code goes back even further, to a time when Corvettes were pretty much a single model with a devilishly tempting list of extra-cost engines of increasingly license-endangering output. Today's Z06, even with all the tricks concealed under its body panels, looks much like the common Corvette, set apart mainly by touches like an air scoop on the hood, four exhaust pipes and obvious upsizing of the tires and wheels. Alas, the Z06 badges on the otherwise discrete exterior, with their "505 hp" inscription, will prevent you from pulling a fast one on the insurance agent.
It's another story under the skin: by comparison, today's Z06 is an entirely different car than the standard Corvette, as it ought to be for $65,690, about $20,000 more than the basic car. The departures are fundamental, starting with the substitution of a hydroformed aluminum frame for the steel one in the higher-volume car. Lightweight materials are used liberally: carbon-fiber front fenders, magnesium engine cradle and roof, titanium connecting rods. The effort pays off in a 3,130-pound curb weight, 50 pounds less than a garden-variety 'Vette despite the added mass of large brakes and a racing-type dry-sump oil system.
The 7-liter engine, with 470 pound-feet of torque, is nominally a descendant of Chevy's small-block V-8 of 1955. (Don't expect any parts to be interchangeable, though.) It would be easy to dismiss it as a low-tech bludgeon in a world of surgically precise, electronically variable-everything power plants. While other cars in the horsepower stratosphere are twin-cam designs, with four valves per cylinder (or a supercharger, or both), the Z06 earns its keep with one camshaft, 16 pushrods and decades of small improvements.
Such a V-8 ought to be a rough-hewn brute. It is anything but; sure, there is a masculine growl to its mechanical whirrings and low-register exhaust, but it is easy to drive (all that torque helps) and it never got fussy on me, even dawdling in traffic.
Likewise, there is nothing light or delicate about the gearshift, but it does just what a firm hand orders it to. Ultra-low-profile tires accentuate the car's ride stiffness, and the Z06 can lapse into an odd side-to-side rocking motion on rough stretches.
For many who have gravitated to Corvettes, the Z06's appeal can be summed up in a short statement: zero to 60 in 3.4 seconds, as measured by Car and Driver magazine. Of course, there are a number of cars in the same territory, though all of them cost considerably more.
Looking at figures like the quarter-mile performance — 11.8 seconds at 125 m.p.h. — offers some perspective on just how sustainable the acceleration is after the initial blast. For many who experience the car at full throttle, it will be as close to the power of a big-bore sport motorcycle as they will ever get. The full potential is easy to use, and a driver can feel the constant struggle between tire grip and traction-control intervention that makes the Z06 feel like an old-time muscle car. It's the fountain of youth on four wheels.
Lest the in-laws accuse you of merely replaying your adolescence, you can note that for all its moxie, the Z06 is not a gas guzzler — at least, as defined by the E.P.A. — with mileage rated at 16 city and 26 highway. (The standard 400-horse 'Vette is rated 18/28). All this and a top speed of 198 m.p.h.!
In a few days of driving, it is hard to fault the added equipment in the Z06 package, though Chevy could improve on the el-cheapo steering wheel. Even after a new owner's puppy love wanes, complaints will mostly be carryovers from the basic Corvette.
As I returned home from my one-day nostalgia break, an Exxon commercial came on the radio, advising drivers that in addition to car pooling and using public transportation to conserve fuel, they should "avoid hard acceleration." The suggestion seemed perfectly rational to a 50-something adult, but the 18-year-old inside me only asked, "Why?"
INSIDE TRACK: Track-bred and street-wise.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/automobiles/05VETTE.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
By NORMAN MAYERSOHN
Published: February 5, 2006
THE turnpike exit was not the one I had planned to take, but I found myself at the bottom of the off ramp anyway, waving the E-ZPass tag at the toll booth and merging onto Route 18. Overruling the plan to continue farther south, a Corvette and my subconscious conspired to drop me into a different, but still familiar, landscape.
With no particular timetable or goal — other than to put some miles on the most powerful car Chevrolet has ever built, the 2006 Corvette Z06 — I did not resist. A slight detour took me along a stretch of Highway 9, mythologized by a local singer named Springsteen, and still got me to the Jersey Shore where my exploits with cars began.
Many guys with a few gray hairs — and I seem to have fewer each day — buy Corvettes to revisit their youth, though perhaps not so literally. In many ways, the Z06 is a perfect car for the journey. It has remained true to tradition, still a two-seater with a booming V-8 up front, but now reaches back to the gauzy days of skinny tires and cheap gas with a magic number: 427 cubic inches.
The link is a direct one for me. I drove to college over these roads in my oldest brother's 427 Corvette, a '67 four-speed coupe with three carburetors, a voracious appetite for Sunoco 260 and altogether too much power for a newly licensed teenager.
The Z06 option code goes back even further, to a time when Corvettes were pretty much a single model with a devilishly tempting list of extra-cost engines of increasingly license-endangering output. Today's Z06, even with all the tricks concealed under its body panels, looks much like the common Corvette, set apart mainly by touches like an air scoop on the hood, four exhaust pipes and obvious upsizing of the tires and wheels. Alas, the Z06 badges on the otherwise discrete exterior, with their "505 hp" inscription, will prevent you from pulling a fast one on the insurance agent.
It's another story under the skin: by comparison, today's Z06 is an entirely different car than the standard Corvette, as it ought to be for $65,690, about $20,000 more than the basic car. The departures are fundamental, starting with the substitution of a hydroformed aluminum frame for the steel one in the higher-volume car. Lightweight materials are used liberally: carbon-fiber front fenders, magnesium engine cradle and roof, titanium connecting rods. The effort pays off in a 3,130-pound curb weight, 50 pounds less than a garden-variety 'Vette despite the added mass of large brakes and a racing-type dry-sump oil system.
The 7-liter engine, with 470 pound-feet of torque, is nominally a descendant of Chevy's small-block V-8 of 1955. (Don't expect any parts to be interchangeable, though.) It would be easy to dismiss it as a low-tech bludgeon in a world of surgically precise, electronically variable-everything power plants. While other cars in the horsepower stratosphere are twin-cam designs, with four valves per cylinder (or a supercharger, or both), the Z06 earns its keep with one camshaft, 16 pushrods and decades of small improvements.
Such a V-8 ought to be a rough-hewn brute. It is anything but; sure, there is a masculine growl to its mechanical whirrings and low-register exhaust, but it is easy to drive (all that torque helps) and it never got fussy on me, even dawdling in traffic.
Likewise, there is nothing light or delicate about the gearshift, but it does just what a firm hand orders it to. Ultra-low-profile tires accentuate the car's ride stiffness, and the Z06 can lapse into an odd side-to-side rocking motion on rough stretches.
For many who have gravitated to Corvettes, the Z06's appeal can be summed up in a short statement: zero to 60 in 3.4 seconds, as measured by Car and Driver magazine. Of course, there are a number of cars in the same territory, though all of them cost considerably more.
Looking at figures like the quarter-mile performance — 11.8 seconds at 125 m.p.h. — offers some perspective on just how sustainable the acceleration is after the initial blast. For many who experience the car at full throttle, it will be as close to the power of a big-bore sport motorcycle as they will ever get. The full potential is easy to use, and a driver can feel the constant struggle between tire grip and traction-control intervention that makes the Z06 feel like an old-time muscle car. It's the fountain of youth on four wheels.
Lest the in-laws accuse you of merely replaying your adolescence, you can note that for all its moxie, the Z06 is not a gas guzzler — at least, as defined by the E.P.A. — with mileage rated at 16 city and 26 highway. (The standard 400-horse 'Vette is rated 18/28). All this and a top speed of 198 m.p.h.!
In a few days of driving, it is hard to fault the added equipment in the Z06 package, though Chevy could improve on the el-cheapo steering wheel. Even after a new owner's puppy love wanes, complaints will mostly be carryovers from the basic Corvette.
As I returned home from my one-day nostalgia break, an Exxon commercial came on the radio, advising drivers that in addition to car pooling and using public transportation to conserve fuel, they should "avoid hard acceleration." The suggestion seemed perfectly rational to a 50-something adult, but the 18-year-old inside me only asked, "Why?"
INSIDE TRACK: Track-bred and street-wise.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/automobiles/05VETTE.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
