[Music] do you remember the old Corvette C6 Z6 that 7 L LS7 engine that revved and revved 505 horsepower proper Thumb in the eye to European sports cars of the time so fast and so intense I only mention it because I've been trying to get my head around this new car the C8 ZR1 because it has to get more than an entire LS7 engines power output through each 34 5 Section Tire yeah there were rumors this thing was going to be a hybrid and share its huge power output between four wheels but no 5.5 L
flat plane crank twin turbocharged V8 1,064 horsepower 828 ft-lb of torque and just rear wheeel drive there is so much more to say about this car but that's a pretty good place to start isn't it so here it is the ZR1 or ZR1 whatever you prefer and you didn't misunderstand I said 1,64 brake horsepower it's the first ever turbocharged Corvette but thanks to the flat plane crank configuration it revs to 8,000 RPM with maximum power at 7,000 RPM it's not exactly peaky though and produces over 800 foot pounds of torque from 3 to 62,000 revs
I guess I could have said more power and torque driven wheel than an entire GT3 RS 4 L flat 62 so it's a regular production Corvette that should cost under $200,000 with an engine to shade laf Ferrari or P1 or Veyron or 918 spider or pretty much anything with a combustion engine and rear drive save for True outliers from Koenig egg or Hennessee by any measure it is utterly outrageous Chevy has provided me with some fun fast facts they call them about this car and I'm going to run through a few because they really do
speak of this car's amazing performance potential okay so for example all four test drivers on their first lap at the nurburg ring achieved over 2 100 m hour the first ever measured quarter mile for this car was under 10 seconds the first time they took it to the Milford Proving Ground it exceeded the old zr1's top speed which was 212 mph it produc produces 545 kilos of down force with the ztk package that's a lot more than a 992 GT3 although not really close to that monster the GT3 RS what else well the exhaust tips
provide 37 lb of thrust because of course they do the turbos the impellers get to 2/3 the temperature of the space shuttle on re-entry the tips of the turbos get to 1.7 times the speed of sound this car has extraordinary numbers attached to it massive potential but what's behind that what is this thing actually all about as you can see the car comes as either convertible or Coupe which retains the tarar roof arrangement of lesser Corvettes each body style is available in standard form or with a more extreme ztk package which consists of a much
more aggressive High downfall setup plus stiffer Springs and a bespoke tune for the Magnetic Ride Control cars equipped with ztk also get mitchellan cup to our tires even so the ZR1 doesn't build on the already sharp naturally aspirated Z6 with an even tighter track Focus but instead goes the other way the ride is said to be a bit more comfortable and the unlimit behavior slightly more forgiving with all that power they didn't need or want to make a car right on the Edge at 1665 kilos DY for the coupe and 1705 for the convertible the
ZR1 is around 75 kilos heavier than the ZO6 you can trim that with carbon fiber wheels and other lightweight options too but whichever version you go for the heart of this ZR1 is this incredible new lt7 engine I'm joined here by Jordan Lee who's going to give us the full Lowdown he is chief engineer of the small block V8 engine family which is a fantastic job title I have to say the best job ever so get geeky tell me all the the decisions made give us the full Lowdown on the lt7 all right well it's
our our latest and greatest and we uh we actually think of this as one of our our best engines ever it's uh the most powerful production v8 engine ever put in a sports car most powerful production uh V8 engine ever made in America uh we had a lot of lofty goals early on when we designed and developed the engine and we wanted uh a ton of horsepower for the C8 ZR1 um the Gemini uh small BL Gemini uh lt7 engine is actually a brother engine to the lt6 which is in the Z06 which you probably
know pretty well um all new architecture it's got a dry sump loop system dedicated uh scavenge pump this one has a seven uh Bas scavenge pump system and a high- press oil pump so it's actually eight stages uh purpose-built it's almost like a race engine for a car um the loop system performance under uh really rigorous track conditions is just phenomenal uh the engine is very solid robust extremely durable and makes a ton of power so we focused intently on making a lot of power uh has two of the biggest turbochargers ever on a gasoline
engine we went with the Bonos scroll so we can get the maximum power out of the engine and we actually started with our goals to be 850 horsepower originally but when we built the first engines and had them on the dyno and we were running them on the dyo with the waste Gates fully open we were making over 800 horsepower at that point and we all knew oh my God this thing's going to make a ton of power so we were closey with we didn't want to make sure we didn't overpower the car and we
started iterating and increasing the power power levels so 850 became 900 and 900 became 1,000 and then uh when we did the power rating we went full blower uh to get as much power as we could and we end up with 1064 1,64 horsepower okay so tell us about the boost pressure and also the characteristics of the engine because it's a pretty high specific output but you were saying to me earlier that the actual response is very much like an natur aspirated engine just really enhanced there is some uh unique technical features that allow us
to do that the big turbos can result and turbo lag but there's an anti-t turbo lag strategy that we use in calibration with the software that's kind of like a miracle to me uh it keeps the turbo spooled up so anytime you tip in the throttle it's extremely responsive and if you didn't hear that little turbo whistle uh which I think is very endearing to the character of the engine you would be hard pressed to know that it's a turbo engine uh it's so responsive the other thing that we did I think that we're we're
quite proud of is we were able to come up with a large displacement this is very different than the Europeans they have small displacement boosted engines we have 5 and half L and we wanted to make sure when we didn't have boost pressure that the 5 and half lit displacement was enough torque so the car still felt responsive Corvette's have been known uh over its gen all the generations to have a lot of torque response so as soon as you tip in the throttle even at low engine speed you get a lot of performance okay
so much more performance bigger numbers tell us about what you've had to change internally just to to keep this thing to hang together well the lt6 uh has a lot of similar components the crankshaft in particular which is a very robust steel crank shaft but with a turbo engine the Boost pressures of uh the turbos and this particular engine we run up to 24 PSI Peak boost Pro it results in a lot more cylinder pressure in the engine so where the lt6 has an average Peak cylinder pressure of 8 and 1 half megapascals this one
is as high as 11 okay so that extra pressure is extra force on the Piston extra pressure on the rods so uh the things that we had to harden uh or make stronger was the Piston uh and the connecting rod and the Piston pin uh but the crankshaft is pretty much the same it is rebalanced to take uh in account the extra mass of the rotating reciprocating Parts okay you are fresh from a I think you call it final Cal drive so you've been out with some Rivals and just figuring out if you've got the
drivability right tell us about how happy you are with the end product well uh you're correct uh we were on our final 100% ride which is the 100% Point uh just before production and that was uh yesterday and the day before yesterday we drove for 900 miles uh and the engine performance and drive quality was Stellar uh in fact for me it was the best ride I have been on it's the highest rated ride we always find some little things here and there we were hard pressed to find anything with the power TR of the
engine well thank you Jordan I appreciate you talking us through it well it sounds like it's ready so do I get to drive it now sadly I don't but I promise we will soon and I cannot wait it is a monster engine in fact GM's Dyno kept failing or overheating under the stress of tuning the lt7 7 and at full noise it will consume 2 gallons of fuel per minute so that's about 9 Minutes of range you'll get quite a long way though onto the arrow concept Chevy called the standard car the Tope speed king
and the ztk package the track King it's in this configuration that the car produces 545 kilos of downforce although that is way up at the top speed of over 215 mph the biggest change over a Z6 with a z7 package is the flow radiator that eliminates the Frank but there are also additional cooling ducts for the rear brakes behind the side intakes plus rear hatch cooling ducts and the return of the split rear window for the Corvette is functional providing additional venting for the engine bay it's a spectacular looking thing and the carbon fiber front
spoiler and dive planes are pretty extreme I doubt the dive planes would pass European law but sadly right now there are no plans for right-and drive zr1's for us in the UK instead they're focusing on the US and Middle East with final chassis and durability testing at the ring that seems a very big shame to us so what about the body and Chassis of this car well effectively it's very similar to the ZO6 so the body itself is 3.6 in wider than the standard Stingray there's a few uh trick bits that are slightly different from
the Z6 but basically the same composite body now we have a carbon fiber roof of both the coupe and the convertible versions the chassis beneath it is familiar C8 so that means aluminium glued and riveted space frame chassis we've got double wishbones at Each corner so front and rear um we have Magnetic Ride Control 4.0 for this car it's quite interesting what they've done with it in fact if you go for the ztk package that's this Arrow package you get a more aggressive tune for the dampers and you get stiffer Springs but both cars are
slightly less extreme than the Z06 they felt like with this level of performance you didn't need to have it on a knife edge to still deliver monster Track Performance so that's quite an interesting take on it I think it's going to be more usable than a Z06 on the road as well as obviously a lot faster on the track okay wheel entire package very similar same size as the Z6 so that means 275s at the front 345 25 ZR 21s at the rear with the standard car you get the p4s Michelin tire and that is
exactly the same as on the Z06 but if you go for this package you get the cup 2R I mean it looks like a slick tie absolutely monster tire package and it is slightly different to account for the higher top speed this thing does over 215 miles now even in high downforce mode so the construction is slightly different on the cup 2R okay Wheels standard you get alloy wheels there's four different finishes including the edge blue which is new for ZR1 you can also get these optional carbon fiber Wheels we've seen carbon fiber Wheels on
the Corvette Z6 before but these are different they say they save 18 kilos or so of unsprung mass between uh all four corners and give you some free lap time well it's not free obviously let's say they're going to be $155,000 or thereabouts but apparently the engineers are reporting it's quite a lot quicker around their handling track brakes obviously very important for a car with 1,64 horsepower this has a whole new brake package internally they call it the j58 brake package and it's a different carbon construction for the discs calipers six pots at the front
four pots at the rear 400 mil discs at the front 390 mil at the rear but yeah like I say you can see the Finish is slightly different they're a longer carbon strand in the construction of the disc which are said to be much better for dissipating heat and for endurance too and I think that's really key to this car they've been through every detail it isn't just about the power output speaking to the engineers spending a bit of time around the car it's clear they've tried to bring the level of control exploitability and how
intuitive the car is to drive right up to that level I think it's really interesting they've backed away slightly from the Z 06 is set up it's slightly softer slightly calmer cuz they know you're going to get the lap time from all that power output anyway so yeah a thorough job all the way through the chassis there are so many little detail changes here even the bolt spacing for the rear wheels has increased to help contain all that lt7 power inside though well don't expect a [Music] revolution inside is familiar if you've been anywhere near
a C8 Corvette it's effectively exactly the same the only difference I can spot is in the rearview mirror you can see that big wing on this car obviously the car still comes in Coupe form which has a tarer roof which still fits in the back or this which is the convertible we're going to use this car it's a bit easier to see the interior and what I'm talking about but effectively pretty nice I like these things the square steering wheel really upset some people doesn't bother me at all actually um never really had an issue
with it but it's C8 Corvette love it or load it that's what you get inside I guess more interesting are all the various driver modes because there's quite a lot in these cars again it will be familiar if you're a Corvette owner but I'm going to run through them anyway so I have a mode controller down here it's a rotary dial effectively almost like a BMW iDrive type thing we start in weather mode which we could probably just call British mode couldn't we with the summer that we've been having it's been awful but that's for
rain inclement weather then my mode which is you can adjust various different parameters for what you actually like and then you click up through tour self-explanatory Sport and track and effectively what you're changing is steering feel and steering weight the Magnetic Ride Control for so you're changing obviously the damper settings um engine response engine sound the brake field too this has an e boost on the brake system so they can adjust um the feel of that depending on pedal pressure Etc and you can get into the performance traction management as well which we'll come back
to in a second because there is one more mode and that is the Z mode on the steering wheel this is again like a favorite mode but it's different from my mode in that you can also change the traction control setting so you can get everything off with this button if that's how you want it or you can delve into the performance traction management performance traction management effectively is a program that allows you to experience more of the car's Dynamic repertoire as you get more experienced I always struggle to get into these but I'm going
to give it a go so I'm in track mode I do a double click of the traction control button and yes I get into performance traction mode which starts off with wet then goes up to dry ESC is still on at this stage then sport it goes on then race one which is ESC off so this is effectively just a traction control system race two which again allows even more slip and then you can turn it off alog together so there are many many modes to get your head around but if you're a Corvette owner
and you've got a C8 or a Z6 you're going to understand that pretty simply for the rest of us it's always a bit of a mystery but we'll get there [Music] eventually there is so much to cover with this ZR1 that we can't really do do it justice we've only been here a couple of hours and we're still scratching the surface of all the engineering going on but my conclusion really is what a time to be alive we keep hearing about the end of the internal combustion engine and maybe that's true but while we still
have them people are pushing to the Limit and Beyond and that is certainly what they've done with this Corvette ZR1 they've pushed and pushed and pushed on every front and I can't believe you're going to be able to buy a factory built Corvette for not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things compared to European Rivals with 1,64 horsepower it's amazing and all that chassis Tech too so for me I want a CPO please but I'll have it with the ztk package I cannot wait to drive it and I think the venue nurburging
let's go nurburging yes please can we please drive it at the nurburging
