Month: May 2012

The cars of the 1960s may be high-powered fun machines in our memories, but muscle cars from that era just don’t have what it takes to make Edmunds INSIDE LINE’s list of the 100 most powerful cars of all time.

And that’s not just an opinion. INSIDE LINE says each car’s ranking is determined by the horsepower rating as claimed by its manufacturer.

The only Corvette to make the list is, of course, the 2009 ZR1, which is rated at 638-hp, though there were two other Corvette-powered creations that made the top 10.

The ZR1 came in at No. 38, and here’s what INSIDE LINE had to say about it:

“6.2-liter, OHV, 16-valve V8, supercharged. Chevrolet exceeds itself with the most powerful Corvette ever. It’s no secret the trick is the Roots-style blower heaving into the LS-series V8. Will run zero to 60 in 3.8 seconds and destroy the quarter-mile in 11.5 seconds at 128.3 mph.”

Meanwhile, the 2010 Hennessey Venom GT, rated at 1,200-hp with a theoretical top speed of 272 mph thanks to its version of the Corvette ZR1 motor, was No. 2.

Says INSIDE LINE of the Hennessey creation: “Just the idea of stuffing a hot-rodded LS9 power plant in the back of a Lotus Elise is enough to make our loins ache. And it’s exactly the kind of overkill Hennessey Performance Engineering loves to create. Hennessey’s Venom GT is available with several power options which shouldn’t make any difference in its sub-100-mph performance. And above that, this thing will be insanely quick. Fortunately, Hennessey has done computational fluid dynamics on this most menacing machine. This is just a nice way of saying that it shouldn’t get airborne when the speed gets silly.”

And, coming in at No. 7 was the 2007 Zenvo ST1, rated at 1,100-hp with its Corvette Z06 engine. “7.0-liter, OHV, 16-valve V8, turbocharged and supercharged. 1,054 lb-ft at 4,500 rpm. Straight out of the tough back alleys of Denmark comes the midengine Zenvo ST1 powered by a supercharged and turbocharged version of the Corvette Z06′s V8. The company claims zero to 62 mph takes 3.0 seconds and the car boasts a 233-mph top speed,” INSIDE LINE writes.

So what was the No. 1 car? The 2009 SSC Ultimate Aero — rated at a whopping 1,287-hp at 6,075 rpm. Says INSIDE LINE of the winner: “6.3-liter, OHV, 16-valve V8, twin turbos. Shelby Supercars hasn’t (as far as IL knows) made the Ultimate Aero available for media outlets to test or drive. But the company’s claims of zero to 60 in under 2.8 seconds and a 257.41-mph tested top speed have earned it attention anyhow.”

Two other recent General Motors creations also made the list, both with Corvette-derived engines.

At No. 81 is the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V, rated at 556-hp at 6,000 rpm.

“6.2-liter, OHV, 16-valve V8, supercharged. Cadillac brazenly stakes its claim to high performance with a CTS sedan that shares much of its supercharged LS-series V8 with the Corvette ZR1. Runs to 60 in 4.3 seconds and nails the quarter-mile in 12.4 seconds at 115 mph. Later joined by coupe and wagon version,” INSIDE LINE says.

And at No. 66 is the 2012 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, 580 hp at 6,000 rpm. “6.2-liter, OHV, 16-valve V8, supercharged. A legendary name on a true American muscle car. The V8 is a variant of the engine used in the awesome Corvette ZR1,” INSIDE LINE writes.

If you take a look at the list, make a note that we may be living in the Golden Age of power.

“Incredibly,” writes INSIDE LINE, “the weakest of the bunch packs 544 hp and the oldest hasn’t even hit its 23rd birthday. This list isn’t based on opinion, but fact. Each machine’s spot on the list was determined by its horsepower rating as claimed by its manufacturer. After months of research, we included every obscure supercar we could find, from Ascari to Zenvo, but we left out tuner machines and kit cars. This list is for ‘manufacturers’ only.”

Source:
Edmunds Inside Line

Related:
[VIDEO] Epic Drives: Corvette ZR1 Chases 200 MPH in Europe
Two Corvettes Make InsideLine.com’s 100 Most Beautiful Cars of All Time List
Chevrolet Is The Top Performance Brand in the USA

 

Phil Perry doesn’t know much about the previous owners of his 1962 Corvette, but he does know one thing: they obviously took good care of his car for nearly 50 years until he could take possession of it.

Some folks might call his very nice Roman Red C1 a “survivor,” but the fact is that the previous owners were the kind of car fanatics who just plain took good care of their car while it was in their possession. This was no barn find covered in dust with boxes stacked on top of it.

Unfortunately, the man Phil bought the car from a little over a year ago died shortly after, so Phil hasn’t been able to find out much about the other previous owners.

He does know that the car made it to 2012 with its original 327 engine, 4-speed transmission and 3.08 geared Positraction rear end still intact. It’s a two-top car, too, with a black soft top and a red hard top.

Phil was also able to find out that the car was built on April 7, 1962, which interestingly enough was a Saturday.

“When I first looked up the build date and saw that it was a Saturday, I thought that there must be some kind of mistake. But after I did some research, sure enough, the factory did operate on Saturdays back then,” Phil said.

Check out the full feature article and additional photos from our friends at Corvette Online.

Source:
CorvetteOnline.com

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Bloomberg auto columnist Jason Harper offers up some constructive criticism of the Chevrolet Corvette in a recent video.

Harper and a buddy took a Ferrari 458 and a new Corvette to the racetrack in Monticello in the Catskills, and they came away impressed with the American car.

“We drove the 458, which is an amazing car on the track, as you would expect,” Harper says, “and then I took the Corvette out. You know, the Corvette’s got some issues – it’s an older car, it looks a little cheesy, the interior’s terrible. And then I got it on the racetrack, and I remembered it’s a truly fantastic car. It is America’s supercar.”

As General Motors prepares for the seventh-generation Corvette due out as a 2014 model, Harper says he asked himself what are the things that aren’t working and what are the things that are about the current generation.

“And I’ll tell you what, on the racetrack, it is absolutely working!”

Harper says the current Corvette is “so much fun, it is so much fun to drive.”

But he says the interior is a little bit of the bad old GM. “I think we’re gonna see in the new generation, they are going to really step it up. (Right now) the leather’s a little not great, the interior looks a little cheesy, a little boy racer. It’s not as grownup as it probably should be to compete against some of the other cars it competes against, you know, some of the Audis and the BMWs.”

He wishes Chevrolet would take a page from Cadillac. “The Cadillac interiors are amazing,” Harper says. “If they would get something on that level with the new Corvette, I think a lot of the people buying European cars would come and take a look at the next-generation Corvette and realize that the car itself drives like the dickens. It is so fast and so fun that you know I got out of the Ferrari and into the Corvette and I didn’t even mind too much, you know.”

He says Corvette wins “again and again and again” against Ferrari in the American Le Mans Series.

“So I’d like them just to fix these couple of little things in the next generation, and we’ll remind everybody that it’s America’s supercar. … It can’t be that hard, yet it seems to be. It’s just that close.”

Source:
Bloomberg Businessweek

Related:
[VIDEO] Corvette ZR1 vs Cadillac V-Powered Wagon in Quarter Mile Drag Race
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