The Chevrolet Corvette is the great American sports car. It's thrilling to drive, with breathtaking acceleration performance and exceptionally tenacious grip for hard braking and high-speed cornering.
Value isn't the first thing that comes to mind when talk turns to the Corvette but, when it comes to high performance, it might be the best bang-for-the-buck deal on the planet. For the price of a midsize luxury sedan, the Corvette delivers supercar performance. It's easy to drive on a daily basis and maintenance costs are not exotic.
We love the standard Coupe, with either the manual or Paddle Shift automatic. It quickly infuses a driver with confidence. Its brakes are fantastic. And, it's blazingly fast. The six-speed automatic transmission works great and lives up to the advanced technology in the rest of the car; it can be shifted manually with levers on the steering column.
The Convertible on the other hand is plain wonderful. Drop the top on a nice day, pop in your favorite CD, and you might have what psychologists call a peak experience, a moment where you revel in being alive. It's a fantastic feeling, and at those moments the Corvette more than justifies its price. The aural sounds of the burbling V8, the body-colored trim that surrounds the cabin, the feel of power beneath, it is automotive heaven.
The Corvette can be a reasonably comfortable daily driver in most locales, for at least three of the four seasons. The latest-generation Corvette is a sophisticated car, and its performance does not exact a painful toll on driver or passenger. And, with all that performance, it still gets an EPA-rated 26 mpg on the Highway, better than most SUVs.
The Z06 is a true supercar for a price that's merely expensive, as opposed to insanely expensive. The Z06 is powered by the 7.0-liter 505-horsepower LS7 V8, has a lightweight chassis and is fitted with upgraded brakes. If any $70,000 car can be called a bargain, this is the one, at least in terms of raw performance. The Corvette Z06 accelerates faster, grips better and stops shorter than European sports cars that cost twice as much. And we find it easier to drive than a Viper. Indeed, it takes an expensive machine, well driven, to compete with a Z06.
Moving even further upward is the ZR1, a limited-production extremely high performance iteration that boasts a 6.2-liter V8 that's supercharged and cranks out 638 horsepower and 604 pound-feet of torque. It is the most powerful, quickest, fastest, most capable and highest-performing production car ever built by General Motors, which also makes it the highest-performing Corvette ever built, and carries a hefty price tag of $103,970. According to Chevrolet, it has a top speed of 205 mph.
For 2009, changes to the Corvette line are minimal. There is a lower-priced Convertible, the 1LT, which makes it possible to have a Corvette Convertible for less money. The power convertible top is standard on the 2LT trim level and all versions above that. The Coupes have a standard power hatch pull-down. And there are some new colors inside and out and minor enhancements to trim and features. The Z06 has new 10-spoke alloy wheels and its engine has a bigger dry-sump lubrication system, with 10.5 quarts capacity instead of the former 8.0 quarts.
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