The Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Is the 2023 MotorTrend Performance Vehicle of the Year!
Never Fear, the Z06 Is Here! Sure, it's a performance bargain, but it’s also so much more.
Alexander StoklosaWriterWilliam WalkerPhotographerJan 20, 2023
The Z06 is now a benchmark for ultimate production car performance—one big reason why it's our 2023 Performance Vehicle of the Year.
www.motortrend.com
"Engineering Excellence
If you caught the second season of The White Lotus, HBO's deliciously voyeuristic descent into deeply conflicted vacationers' tortured stays at a Sicilian luxury resort, you probably caught yourself cranking the volume a little louder during the opening credits. The title song is perfectly sequenced with the camera's panning across scenes of a classical renaissance-style fresco, the bouncy, operatic melody building in intensity before the bridge, when the viewer's gaze flits rapidly between suddenly disturbing and carnal details and the soundtrack unravels into mania, the music expanding and adopting shrieking urgency.
The credit sequence's sensory overload is the closest mainstream analogue to how the 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06's new 5.5-liter V-8 engine introduces itself. Installed in what looks a lot like the regular Corvette with some carbon-fiber doodads stuck on here and there, it begins its surprise when you thumb the starter button. The engine wakes with an unsettlingly loud crack before falling into a tense hum. Blip the throttle, and the revs leap like the digital tachometer had a seizure. That was only a toe's worth of gas, what if you … press the pedal all the way?
Confusing thoughts and questions begin flashing in your mind quicker than you can reconcile. This is a Chevy, right? But it's belting out a Ferrari's soundtrack, sending a tingle through the steering wheel and pedals as the revs climb. And climb. And just keep on climbing like the entirety of Italy's sports car heritage is free-soloing El Capitan. Your eyes dart around, looking for something grounding. OK, there are heated and cooled seats. The OnStar emergency button sticks out like seeing one of those "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up!" alarms for the elderly around a coed's neck at a midnight rave. But that sound! What is happening?
Almost entirely on its own, the Z06's dual-overhead-cam 32-valve flat-plane-crankshaft LT6 V-8 elevates the Corvette to parity with the supercars whose performance it has long come close to matching. Its noise is as exotic as its spec sheet, and it is the most powerful naturally aspirated production V-8 ever. Not for the price, not for an American car—of all time.
Developed alongside a competition version for Corvette Racing's endurance-series contenders and with nary a pushrod, the 5.5-liter V-8 spins up 670 hp at 8,400 rpm and 460 lb-ft at 6,300. Without the racing version's required restrictor plates, Z06 owners enjoy 150 hp more than Corvette Racing's pro drivers do.
In a hint at the rest of the Z06's capabilities, six scavenging pumps for the dry-sump oiling system ensure even pickup and can handle 1.16 g of uninterrupted lateral acceleration. Forged aluminum pistons weigh 8 percent less than those in the old Z06's LS7 V-8, and the titanium connecting rods are 21 percent lighter, slashing rotating mass and helping the engine rev to its 8,600-rpm redline quicker than any other Corvette in history. Credit also goes to the flat-plane crankshaft, which spaces the rods at 180 degrees instead of 90, as in a cross-plane design. You hear this change as much as you feel it, the new 1-4-3-8-7-6-5-2 firing order wailing through a new center-exit exhaust that makes a shorter run to the 'Vette's tail. Besides 21 percent less back pressure than the old Z06, the exhaust's "parabolic reflector" tips direct some of the V-8's noise back at the cabin."
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Thank You
@Ghost1 I had absolutley zero idea, LOL!
Regardless it's a pretty good way to start the year! Very impressive as most already know!
