A C7 ZR1 in full-camo makes a daylight raid on Nurburgring in the snow and rain!
Dateline: 4.20.17 – Before you know it, we’ll know it! Chevrolet and the media are teasing us like never before. Spy photos are now so clear and sharp that it looks like Car and Driver Magazine’s April 2017 cover nailed it.
Of course, we still don’t know what’s really lurking beneath all that carbon fiber. Will the ZR1 be powered by the next generation LT5 engine? Will the ZR1 have GM’s Active Aero System? Or, are they saving those gems for the mid-engine C8? Folks, we just do not yet know, which leads to delicious bench racing. Enjoy the below Corvette video.
Even without the LT5 or Active Aero goodies, a goosed-up LT4 sporting a bigger supercharger and intercooler could do the trick. Maybe Chevrolet engineers will employ the car’s air conditioner system in a similar way that Dodge used to help get the Demon up to 840-horsepower.
I don’t know if this is the last hurrah for high-performance internal combustion engines before hybrid and, or all-electric Tesla-like performance cars become the norm. Or, this might be the march to a factory-build, 1000-horsepower, gasoline-burning mega-performance car!
I know, I’m bench racing faster than a speeding ZR1! Until we know for sure, feast your eyes and ears on the engineering development ZR1 as it blasts around the Nurburgring track in the snow and rain. That must have been a HOOT! Perhaps Chevrolet used that adverse conditions to test the beast’s traction control and active suspension.
Meanwhile, CorvetteOnline.com editor Dave Cruikshank postulated that the C7 ZR1 is really an updated version of the 2010 Z06X concept Corvette. I would argue that the Z06X was the seed for the C7 ZR1, as the Z06X was built as a “what if” club racer, using every performance part available in 2010, plus a full roll cage with all of the chassis-stiffening attributes that such an addition provides.
Of course, Chevrolet claims that the C7’s all-aluminum chassis is 20-percent stiffer than that of the all-aluminum chassis used on the C6 Z06/ZR1. So, perhaps an add-on roll cages wasn’t needed for the C7 ZR1. We’ll see. – Scott
For more images of the ZR1 at Nurburgring, click here… https://www.motor1.com/news/143052/zr1-corvette-prototype-nurburgring-video/?utm_source=insider&utm_medium=email
