This Corvette ZR1 Is What Happens When GM Throws Everything At A Car

I have a theory about the C7 Corvette. The company line is that Corvette was simply approaching the engineering limits of what was possible to achieve with a platform that put a big, long V8 in the front of a RWD car. Advances in tire technology aside, there’s a lot of truth to this. That makes this Sebring Orange C7 ZR1, essentially, the most Corvette you could possibly buy at the time and, if you think a Corvette has to be front-engined, the most Corvette you could buy ever.

My crazy theory goes a little further than this. Almost precisely when GM was finishing up the development of the CZ ZR1, they were also putting together a plan that they called their “Zero, Zero, Zero” strategy, which stood for “Zero Crashes, Zero Emissions, Zero Congestion.”

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If you want to go down the rabbit hole a little with me, here’s a LinkedIn post from Mary Barra on October 3rd, 2017. Here’s what she said:

Even as we continue to deliver the best fuel economy in the vehicles our customers love to drive today, we’ll move relentlessly and irreversibly to a zero emissions future. No more gas. No more diesel. No more carbon emissions.

The sense I’ve always gotten is that the C8 was as much about timing as it was about physics, because a month after that post the C7 ZR1 debuted at the Dubai Motor Show. GM knew it would get one more chance to make the fastest solely internal combustion-powered Corvette ever. This meant going mid-engined before it was too late.

Obviously, in retrospect, Corvette could probably build a V8-powered C9 and it would probably be fine. The world has changed a few times since this car was under development, so it was reasonable for someone at GM to believe the C8 would be the last purely ICE ‘Vette. By that logic, then, the C7 ZR1 is the peak of the original Corvette formula.

The ZR1 Has Always Been At The Extreme

As Mercedes wrote, the ZR1 has long been proof that American companies could build a supercar when it wanted to. The C6 version came out right around the time I started covering the automotive industry and its numbers seemed impossible. It somehow got close enough to cars like the Bugatti Veyron while still sticking to the OG Corvette formula–transverse leaf spring and all–at a very un-exotic price.

When the C7 was revealed, it wasn’t long before rumors started to abound that this would be the last front-engined model, which meant that everyone held their breath to see what was possible with the ZR1. If the concept of the C8 is that the C7 ran out of physics, then the C7 ZR1 must be the Corvette that flew closest to the sun without its massive carbon fiber wing melting off.

 

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While not quite Icarus, the ZR1 ‘s stats were impressive. Horsepower reached 755 @ 6,300 RPM with no small help from the massive, 2.6-liter Eaton supercharger (by comparison, the displacement of the inline-four in the contemporaneous Chevy Impala was just 2.5 liters). Top speed was marked at just shy of 215 MPH, and 60 mph was achievable in under three seconds if you were willing to risk the ticket.

The C6’s clear hood window was replaced with a massive, bulging hunk of beautifully formed carbon fiber, and the aforementioned wing was bolted straight into the chassis. Everything about the car screams “I dare you.” Josh Jacquot is world class car reviewer and a way better driver than I am. He took a ZR1 similar to the one for sale down to the Texas Mile for Car And Driver and had this to say about the car:

Like its Stingray Z51, Grand Sport, and Z06 brothers, the Last Samurai of the seventh-generation Corvette uses an electronically controlled rear differential, making it a taloned savage in the hills, a ruthless stalker of apexes, the Overlord of Powerslides. It is also an annihilator of good judgment, catapulting our usual caution into the next county as it encouraged deeper braking and ever higher cornering speeds. It is a GTLM car for the street and exponentially more serious than a standard Stingray. The lighter, more communicative steering of the base car is gone, replaced by a helm as leaden as a tectonic plate.

What physics taketh in terms of having a giant snorting V8 up front, it giveth back in the ability to slide the ever lovin’ shit out of it.

Someone Got It In The Good Color

This 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is, in the humble opinion of your FSF-writer, the best color. I am a Texas Longhorn and have been thusly indoctrinated to approve of orange over every color, even if Sebring Orange tends a little more towards Volunteer than Burnt. The same goes for the interior. In my view, a Corvette should either be black or red on the inside, but a red interior with an orange car is hard to pull off.

If you don’t speak GM, this car has the 3ZR trim level, which is to say it has the highest one, give the owner carbon fiber accents, heated/cooled seats, the navigation head unit, et cetera. The Corvette also gets the very cool built-in performance data recorder. It looks like this:

These came with either the standard seven-speed manual or the eight-speed paddle shifted automatic transmission. This particular model has the eight-speed auto, which was the first time an automatic was offered in a ZR1 Corvette. My preference would be for the manual, even though this is one of those cars were the automatic is the faster of the two options.

According to the listing, this ZR1 only has 10,754 miles on the clock. I bet I’d have done more, as the trick to ZR1s is that they’re surprisingly livable for something with over 700 horsepower due, in part, to the magnetorheological dampers. These cars are also rather large inside and can support those of us are who aren’t Brazilian IndyCar driver-sized.

Given the low miles, my guess is that 10,701 of them were driven trying to suppress one of the biggest smiles you’ve ever seen, and the last 53 were the combined efforts of seven years of trying to find parking.

If you’re interested in buying this car, reach out to Tommy Rezaie at trezaie@galpin.com. Because Galpin Motors is run by Autopian co-founder Beau Boeckmann, you should let Tommy know you heard about the car on The Autopian. If you buy the car it’ll include a Velour Membership, and if you’re already a member it’ll come with an automatic upgrade. If you want anything else sold by Galpin (new or used) you can use the email concierge@theautopian.com and we’ll get you to the right person!