#24 - Americana

For some reason completely unbeknownst to me, the Americans have always lagged behind their counterparts in Europe and Asia when it comes to building sports cars (regardless of what Ford V Ferrari would have you believe). That’s not to say they don’t have the expertise, knowledge and budget…..far from it, but the blueprints they have historically worked from appear to be markedly different from what the rest of the car building world have been using. While Europe has long focused on lightweight chassis design nestled under timeless, handcrafted bodywork and the Japanese manufacturers have become renowned for extracting huge and usable power through the use of forced induction and clever 4WD systems; In America….well, they built muscle cars. Big heavy coupes with even bigger V8 “motors” coupled to suspension and brakes which make horse drawn carts look positively Formula 1. That said, while we Europeans liked nothing more than to bemoan the uncouth and primitive nature of things like the Mustang, Charger and Corvette; the Yanks couldn’t produce them fast enough. Domestic demand was insatiable and given the relatively obtainable price point they were targeting, the accessibility of these cars for the American people was in many ways their biggest triumph……that and the fact corners had yet to be invented in America.

Fast forward a couple of decades and with the help of our good old friend globalisation, European sports cars were no longer the pastime for solely America’s rich and famous. But with the increased availability also came the opportunity for direct comparison between manufacturers…..and unsurprisingly, the results were fairly underwhelming for the big yank tanks. The problem simply put, was that apart from on a quarter mile drag strip, European and Japanese sports cars comprehensively destroyed their American equivalents. Be it handling, build quality, styling, options…..they were vastly superior. But it didn’t really seem to faze the Americans……so what if their cars were too big, thirsty and simple to sell in Europe, they had the American market cornered and that was all they cared about…..or so they led us to believe.

Like any to-do list governed by procrastination, it’s always easier to keep moving the things you least want to address further down the list rather than actually spend any time on them. For the bosses of GM, that was “googling the Nurburgring”. However in February 2007, a Corvette ZO6 development mule was pictured by a logistics operator in Michigan being loaded onto a plane en route to Europe…..something was amiss. It turns out that this particular ZO6, code named Blue Devil, was part of peacetime invasion by the Americans on Europe’s most notorious race tracks…the result of which would ultimately culminate in the creation of the Corvette C6 ZR1.

Now the Corvette ZR1 was to the regular ZO6 what the Porsche GT3 is to the Carrera S…..the lighter, faster and more track focused driver’s car. What’s more, it’s easy to think that this was just a cheap marketing gimmick by GM created to try and steal a couple of sales away from the Porsche’s and Audi’s of the world. The reality however was very different. The ZR1 was fitted with magnetic ride suspension, Brembo carbon ceramic brakes, carbon fibre bonnet, carbon fibre front wings and wheel arches. It had a polycarbonate (fancy plastic) window that sat in the middle of the bonnet showcasing a monumental air-to-liquid intercooler which looked like it wanted to try and eat anyone who came too close. The 638bhp, 604lb ft and 205mph headline figures quickly highlighted this was more than a surface deep marketing ploy by the folks in Detroit.

“What about through the corners?” I hear you ask. Well GM had that covered as well. You see the head honchos realised that in order to compete against the best of Europe, their sports cars needed to have a large amount of track time built into the R&D process. That said, the idea of constantly having to ship cars to and from Germany was less appealing. So instead what they did was to build a faux Nurburgring in their back garden….The Lutz-Ring (or Milford Proving Ground if you want to use its less dramatic, more formal full title). Incorporating elements of Europe’s finest race tracks, the boys and girls at GM now had a proper home grown test bed to develop their sports cars. “If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain”…comes to mind.

And the results were impressive. Most early reviews of the ZR1 by car journos on both sides of the pond were very complementary. There was however an elephant in the room….the price. After all the various taxes had been added on, you would be parting with 6 figures, 100 large ones or £100k for the privilege of driving a Vette with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the road and a PVC rear bumper. That was a big figure for a manufacturer who to date, had no real precedent to justify the price tag. Did it work?…..I guess kind of….maybe.

You were buying a lap time, which even in present day company was a fairly impressive feat. In 2011, the ZR1 lapped the Nurburgring in 7:19. To put some context on that, a Porsche 997 GT2 RS set a lap of 7:24, a Ferrari 488 GTB in 7:21 and Porsche 918 Spyder went around in 7:13….that’s right, the ZR1 was only 6 seconds behind a Holy Grail hypercar like the 918.

At time of writing, the only C6 ZR1 I can find on the market in the UK is a 2012, 21k mile example in Jet Stream Blue with a questionable ebony cashmere interior for £65k. I’m not going to lie; it still feels like a big lump of cash to burn on a car that you will ultimately have to hedge your fuel exposure out on. What’s more, selling it on when you finally grow tired of it (which you inevitably will) won’t be the easiest job in the world given its niche captive audience. That said, it has a whopping great supercharged V8, 3 pedals, a manual gearbox and the ability to embarrass most modern day exotica worth twice the price. It was the first modern day American sports car to showcase that they can do more than just go fast in a straight line so thank you GM…..and keep em coming.

Happy Motoring,

Greg