Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 2009 Review

When the ZR1's supercharged V8 cracks the heavens with its feral call, the accelerative violence will be chilling to anyone who hasn't saddled up and ridden a Tomahawk cruise missile. Many passengers simply freak out. There will be screaming.

The new 6.2-litre LS9 V8 ZR1 is terrifying.

And surprisingly wonderful. And pretty smartly glued together. And more comfortable than the rib-cracking Z06 which donates its 7.0-litre LS7 V8 to HSV's W427. And the ZR1 is rather easy on the juice for a car with 476kW and enough torque to pull India loose from China. General Motors boasts that the new Vette ZR1, with a highway rating of 11.8L/100km, is the most fuel-efficient car with over 450kW. Somebody alert Greenpeace!

The ZR1 shares the twin-tube aluminium frame, carbonfibre front guards, magnesium roof structure, and composite/balsa wood sandwich floor of the Z06. And both retain the Corvette's basic resemblance to a platypus skull. To tell the Z06 and ZR1 apart (and also to help keep it on the ground) GM gives the latter a carbonfibre front splitter and rocker trays which extend into the rear wheel wells. The ZR1's roof panel and roll hoop are carbonfibre weave under a heavy layer of UV-resistant clear coat. Forged aluminium wheels span 19 inches in front, 20 at the back, with chrome plating a US$2000 option (hey, it's still America, baby). The rubber, ZR1-unique Michelin Pilot Sport PS2s with run-flat capability, is 10mm wider at both ends – 335/25 at the back. Brembo monoblock calipers clamp on carbon-ceramic discs, 394mm in front, 380 rear, while GM's patented magnetorheological electronic dampers substantially reduce the body
cha-cha-cha over bumps and undulations.

Oh, and there's also the window in the bonnet. Through it, the supercharged LS9 V8's intercooler can be seen twitching in rhythm to your right foot. GM claims Ferrari 599 GTB performance for one-third of the price. In the ZR1, the 100km/h mark falls in about 3.4sec, the company says, with a terminal velocity well north of 330km/h. An electronic limiter kicks in at 338km/h for "social responsibility," says chief engineer Tadge Juechter.

GM invited us to its Milford, Michigan proving ground for a brief half-day nibble of the US$105,000 ZR1 before the full feast of testing commences. The 'Lutzring', as employees have dubbed the 4.7km, 20-turn Milford Road Course in honour of GM's meat-eating vice chairman Robert Lutz, was finished in 2004. It plunges 41 metres from hilltop to trough and is pieced together like bathroom plumbing from some of the more treacherous corners in world motorsport including the Nürburgring's famous banked concrete Karussell.

Only 16 out of GM's 266,000 employees are permitted to drive the Milford Road Course. One of which is Corvette development engineer, Jim Mero, last seen on YouTube lapping the 21km Nürburging in a Nissan GT-R-busting 7:26.4 run in the ZR1. (Dodge's Viper ACR has since knocked the Corvette back to second place on the list of fastest production cars with a 7:22 lap of the 'Ring).

The ZR1's cockpit has the familiar Bat Cave atmosphere of the regular Corvette, the only difference being the manifold pressure gauge where the voltage meter lives in base cars. It gets really interesting when the four-lobe Eaton supercharger starts filling the ZR1's 6.2-litre V8 lungs with 0.7bar of boost pressure. The rear end sighs and accelerative Gs roll in like the breakers of a Category Five. Breathing becomes strangely difficult.

At 1515kg, the ZR1 is only 73kg heavier than the naturally aspirated Z06, so it's the king of the hill in handling, not just straight-line shove.

To help tighten up the lifeless, artificial steering endemic to all Corvettes, engineers replaced the aluminium steering column shaft with a stiffer steel link, a change for all '09 Corvettes. There's also a new variable-ratio steering rack that perks up the response, as well as ZR1-specific bushing changes in the suspension.

But perhaps the most credit for the ZR1's feistier helm goes to the Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 run-flats. In comparative tyre tests during the ZR1's development, GM engineers say they were "blown away" by the Michelins. We felt the breeze, too. The ZR1's steering still doesn't have the leanness or data bit-flow of a Porsche 911's, but placing and holding the nose where it's needed is easier and takes less guess-work and prayer. Tail twitch - with 819Nm, there's a lot of tail twitch - is more controllable than it is in the Goodyear-shod Z06, and the 394mm front/380mm rear Brembo carbon-ceramic rotors and monoblock calipers have the familiar, progressive bite of iron brakes without much danger of fade or shimmy.

Out on Michigan's pizza-pocked public roads, the ZR1 rumbles more quietly on its wider tyres and shows less body heaving and impact crash than the Z06. Three cheers for the Magnetic Selective Ride Control, the system of fast-as-electrons variable-rate dampers (not available on the Z06) that comes standard on the ZR1. One cool nuance: on hard launches, the computer turns rear rebound to zero to hold the back end down for better traction.

For such big ordnance, the ZR1 also makes a decent grocery trolley. The double-plate clutch is light, and roll-outs and upshifts happen with doughy smoothness.

Capacity is limited to just 1800 units per year, so high fuel prices and economic gloom in the US shouldn't prevent the ZR1 from being a sell-out, at least for a year or three.