The Great 454 ZL-1 1969 10-Second Monster Corvette Pumpkin!

Dateline: 10.31.11

December ’69 Motor Trend reports on Chevy’s 10-second, 454 ZL-1  Monster Pumpkin Corvette!

Forty years ago it took a lot to get a car to run 10s in the quarter-mile. You needed a BIG engine, open tuned headers, a giant gas sucking Holley carb, slicks, ear plugs, and a lot of NERVE! Today, it’s no biggie for a performance car to run low 11’s. Lingenfelter Engineering has been able to get a mildly modified ZR1 to run low-to-mid 9s with ALL of the stock creature comforts. All you have to do is HOLD ON!

No, back in the old muscle car dayz, low 11s and high 10s in the quarter-mile was Super Stocker and Modified Production territory. Low 10s and 9s was the realm of Pro Stockers with the likes of Grumpy Jenkins, Sox & Martin, Dick Landy, Dyno Don Nicholson and a few dozen others. In their day, they were the rock stars of drag racing.

When the December 1968 issue of Hot Rod Magazine  hit the news stands, with a full-cover shot of the all-aluminum 427 ZL-1 engine, heads spun like Linda Blair in The Exorcist! The headline at the top of the cover read, “A 625-HP LOOK AT: CHEVY’S ALL-ALUMINUM 427.” While today we might say, “There’s no substitute for a supercharger,” back then, the expression was “There’s no substitute for cubic-inches. If there’s enough meat left in the block, just bore it out and insert bigger pistons. Chevy’s 427 had been in production since ‘66, so when the ‘70 models came around, what was Chevrolet to do? Bore, Baby, Bore!

The cast iron 454 was a no-brainer, but what about the all-aluminum ZL-1? Just to see what kind of response they’d get from the press (as if they weren’t sure) Chevrolet engineers Tom Langdon and Gib Hufstader built a special 454 version of the ZL-1, coupled it with a Turbo 400 3-speed tranny, a high-stall torque converter, tall gears, and 9-inch slicks. Yes, it was a quasi-Super Stocker and they let the automotive press make passes on a 1/4-mile stretch at the test track!

Continue reading “The Great 454 ZL-1 1969 10-Second Monster Corvette Pumpkin!”

Vette Videos: How Hi-Tech Z06 & ZR1 Aluminum Frames Are Made

Dateline: 10.17.11

What was once considered pie-in-the-sky and experimental, is now regular production!

To see the much larger version of the Z06/ZR1 chassis, just click the above image

Aluminum has been the automotive industry’s magic material for over 60 years. Corvette engineers have been thinking about an all-aluminum engine and drive train for the Vette since the 1957 Q-Corvette proposal. While it took until 1997 to get there, the engineering department seeded aluminum parts whenever they could.

Nearly 40 years ago, Corvette engineering decided to explore an all-aluminum Corvette. Everything but the tires, plastics, wiring, glass, and other essentials was to be aluminum. Working with Reynolds Aluminum Company, the experimental XP-895 was debuted to the automotive press in 1973. The chassis design was the same as the experimental 2-rotor Corvette, but power was supplied by a 400-CID small-block engine. The completed aluminum car weighed 400-pounds less than the steel bodied XP-892 Wankel-powered experimental. While the styling of the aluminum “Corvette” was interesting, the only design element that connected it to anything Corvette was the aft portion of the roof, from the B-pillar back. Overall, it did not scream “CORVETTE!” but then again, the all-aluminum car wasn’t supposed to be a styling exercise for the C4 Corvette, it was a feasibility study.

The B-pillar roof section of the car looks like a Corvette, but not much else.

Fast forward to the 2006 Z06 and its aluminum chassis. One of the biggest challenges with an aluminum chassis is the strength of materials issue. Lightweight aluminum is soft, so there were interesting shape and construction problems that had to be worked out to mass-produce such a chassis. While it is true that the Z06 wasn’t the first car to use an aluminum chassis (many hand-made exotic cars had aluminum chassis) the Z06 was the first “mass produced” car to have an all-aluminum chassis, engine, and suspension. The net result to that the 2012 Z06 weighs about the same as a C2 mid-year Corvette… with nearly double the horsepower as a base model C2. That’s progress for you. Continue reading “Vette Videos: How Hi-Tech Z06 & ZR1 Aluminum Frames Are Made”