Supercar? Hypercar? American exotic? We go flat out in the new Corvette ZR1 to find out

The Bugatti Veyron doesn’t qualify. That fell a fraction short. Nor do any of the Holy Trinity from just a decade back, and nor did the Ferrari SF90 before the XX came along. The Lamborghini Revuelto sneaks in by a fag paper. Apt.

The 1,000 imperial horsepower club. For so long a four figure power output has felt like the entrance ticket to the ultra exclusive hypercar club. A place where European exotica from the likes of Koenigsegg and Bugatti sit around in Gucci loafers and fashionable shades, sweaters draped across shoulders, sipping cocktails and enjoying an innate sense of superiority.

And now here comes Corvette, banging open the doors like it’s entering a saloon bar and strutting in like it owns the place. You can practically hear the spurs ringing on the floor – 1,064bhp, an output that matches the AMG One and Aston Valhalla, all delivered without the faintest trace of an output-boosting electric motor.

Photography: Greg Pajo

Let me tell you what else the Zee Ar One hasn’t got. A multimillion dollar price. A capped production run. An attention seeking personality. A sense of superiority. We could call these black marks in the hypercar rulebook, any one of them enough to deny the ZR1 entry. As if it cares. What we have here is as wholesomely, predictably American as you imagine – a rootin’ tootin’ horsepower figure with no pretences. A 36oz longhorn prime rib steak with wheels.

It doesn’t look much different to a 670bhp Z06. OK, you can have it with the ZTK pack which gets you the giant rear wing for 545kg of downforce, while the new vented bonnet is undeniably more purposeful and together these facets bring a bit more visual balance, but this is still a pretty basic, clumsy piece of mid-engined design. And the front splitter is weirdly high. So no, you’d never guess what lurks beneath. Another point against it for hypercar qualification.

But the engine? That’s as exotic as anything Europe has to offer. You could claim it’s just the Z06’s nat asp 5.5-litre V8 with a pair of turbos bolted on – the largest turbos ever fitted to a production car – but that would be unfairly dismissive of the engineers’ work.

Essentially only the block remains. The compression ratio and rev limit have been dropped to aid torque, the conrod fractionally shortened to leave a bigger combustion chamber, the piston head dished out more. The crankshaft has been rebalanced, the heads are new, as is the entire intake and exhaust system. The 90° vee didn’t leave space for the turbos between the banks, so those are mounted low and very close in – so close to the exhaust manifold in fact that the air going into them is still on fire.

The 76mm monoscroll blowers spin at up to 137,000rpm (that’s 2,283 rotations per second) and at that speed the turbo tips are travelling at 1.7x the speed of sound. The impellers get to two thirds of the belly temperature of the space shuttle on re-entry. Flat out, the engine demands two gallons of fuel per minute. Expressed another way, it downs a pint every 4.5 seconds.

The original aim, back when Corvette started development of the ZR1 alongside the regular C8 Stingray and Z06, was 850bhp. But the team quickly realised the base V8 was strong as an ox and those blowers could spin to dizzying speeds, so the result of several years of engineering shenanigans (and more than one busted dyno at HQ) is 1,064bhp at 7,000rpm and 828lb ft available anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000rpm. On regular pump gas.

That’s a lot of power for an engine to make, a lot of force for components to deal with – most notably the eight speed twin clutch gearbox, the rear driveshafts and the fat back tyres. They may be 345 width, but you’ll be needing another benefit of that ZTK package – the ‘how are they road legal’ Michelin Cup 2R tyres. Let’s just say the standard Pilot Sport 4Ses can only do so much. Although one of the things they can do – as GM boss Mark Reuss discovered last year – is achieve a 233mph top speed. When warm and sticky and presumably on an equally warm, sticky drag strip, the Cup 2Rs grip hard enough to blast the ZR1 to 60mph in 2.3secs (with, ahem, the one foot rollout Americans insist on).

The back straight at Circuit of the Americas in Texas is 0.63 miles long. I have it on good authority that a McLaren 750S is good for 175mph down here, so here goes...

Clean exit from turn 11 in second gear, feed the power in progressively so you don’t overwhelm the diff and traction, then grab third as you straighten up. Full throttle now, the power delivery isn’t spiky, but instead completely linear, the thrust just building and building and as the needle sweeps past 6,000rpm you think “Oh yeah, now this feels like 1,000bhp”. Grab fourth. Repeat, then fifth. It’s not Koenigsegg Jesko quick – that car made me yelp it was so fast above 120mph – but the thrust is immense, and for a flat plane crank engine, it sounds terrific.

So, 177mph. That’s the last speed I see on the dial before pulverising the brake pedal and letting the standard fit 400mm carbon ceramics prove they’re more than a match for 1,064bhp – 750S speed it is then. Makes sense, the McLaren is hundreds of kilos lighter and would probably turn in a faster lap time. But the ZR1 is there or thereabouts – and not just in a straight line.

It’s a composed and capable track car. If you manage to overstep the limits, the electronic safety nets aren’t as sophisticated as McLaren’s and Ferrari’s, but underpinning the ZR1 is an exploitable, friendly chassis that doesn’t feel overwhelmed. It’s really nicely balanced, resists understeer way better than you’d imagine, and is most likely to step out when trail braking into an apex. The steering isn’t packed with feel, but is connected and confidence inspiring, and the Magneride suspension means the chassis platform stays level and doesn’t get bucked or bumped around.

It’s a great car, great value, delivers proper grown up supercar pace for 911 money

It’s not as energetic, immediate and hard hitting as the 296 or 750S, it doesn’t dance quite so delicately, and its twin clutch gearbox doesn’t pop the shifts home as rapidly. But it’s a force of nature that sounds fantastic and knows how to pick apart a track. Plus it costs about what most Ferrari buyers probably spend on options alone: $174,995, about £130k in old money. It won’t come to the UK, but then it probably wouldn’t sell here as there’s just not the demand in Europe, where pedigree and brand play such a strong role. Who’d know what you’d bought or how wealthy you were if you rocked up in a ZR1?

So what is it? A supercar? A hypercar? Is it exotic at all? Beyond proving Corvette has a talented bunch of engineers, I don’t think it moves the needle that much, doesn’t turn Corvette into a supercar brand. It’s a great car, great value, delivers proper grown up supercar pace for 911 money, but if you didn’t want a Corvette before, this won’t make you want one now. If you’re in Europe. But in America, where most of the world’s supercars are sold, Corvette has a contender. Four figures isn’t the only barrier the ZR1 has broken.

Zap mapped: want a ZR1 with more X factor?

Just when you thought “Yep, 1,064bhp is oodles, no need for a faster one”, here comes a faster one. The ZR1X is a Corvette with no less than 1,250bhp. And this time, yes, electric motors are involved. Only one actually, nabbed from the Corvette E-Ray, massaged for a bit more power and fitted to the front axle to send a peak of 186bhp and 145lb ft to the front wheels.

The ZR1’s back wheels were already working plenty hard enough coping with the twin turbo V8, so they do the same here. End result? More power than a £3.1 million Ferrari F80 – and a faster 0–60mph time, too. Sub 2.0secs, Corvette reckons. And this is no limited edition drag strip special, but a full production model that will be sold alongside the ZR1 and every other Corvette, arriving at the end of this year.

So, is this one a genuine hypercar? It certainly has the numbers of one, but for the reasons cited in the words above, still no. It’s too common, too normal, lacks exoticism and seeing as the engineers have been let loose, why haven’t the designers been extended the same courtesy?

Still, like the ‘ordinary’ ZR1, the X isn’t aimed at us. It’s aimed at an audience who understand from birth exactly what role the Corvette performs and its importance to car culture. And here comes one with 1,250bhp. Catnip in the land of the free and the home of the brave.