The King of the Hill
Hi Friends!
This week, General Motors announced something pretty impressive. Checking in with a hybrid all-wheel drive, 1,250 horsepower twin-turbocharged V8 engine in a mid-engine configuration, with a 0 to 60 time under 2 seconds and a top speed predicted to be well over 200 miles an hour, the Corvette ZR1X (which should have gone the Alfa Romeo Montreal route and been called the Zora, but whatever…..) is an undoubted accomplishment for American automaking.
I’ve said for years, and I will continue to maintain that the 1965 Shelby GT350 is the greatest American road car ever produced. However, it’s impossible to deny that the most important American car of all time is the Chevrolet Corvette. I would say with zero hesitation that it’s also been the most important American car from me personally as well. My intro to classic car ownership was a Corvette. The first model car that my grandfather ever bought for me was a Corvette (which my family dog ate most of when I was a teenager, but I kept and then due to the power of eBay was able to restore during the pandemic. It resides in my office today), the first car I can ever really remember having dreams about when I was a kid was a C4 Corvette, the most cherished car magazine I ever received from my uncle featured a Road & Track road test with Corvette, I sold Corvettes almost exclusively at a dealership I worked at in my twenties and I even have a Corvette tattoo. There’s nothing about any of this that’s atypical either. There’s a lot of people out there that have a similar relationship with this car.
Despite all this, it always seems like the set of standards that Corvettes are judged by do not apply elsewhere. All the early, mid-century racing accomplishments, the fabulous interior design and exterior styling of the 1963 Split-Window, white knuckle driving experience of basically any of the 427 C2 and early C3 cars or the sheer insanity of things like the L88 not withstanding, when we think about cars like the 1990 ZR1 or the 2001 C5 Z06, performance numbers, power to weight ratios, etc have always lined up pretty well with competitors that were undeniably considered to be supercars of their respective time periods. Obviously, production numbers tend to be a bit higher on examples of super Corvettes (usually about 2 to 1) and the prices quite a lot lower, but I think it’s always been more than the just that. Purists tend to point to things like interiors not being up to speed (which on the C5 cars I definitely agree with. The 996 Turbo Porsche and Ferrari 360 and 550 were light years ahead here), but when you think about cars like the Anniversary Lamborghini Countach for example, although materials may be slightly better, those interiors are pure garbage and absolutely miserable places to be from the standpoint of creature comforts and ergonomic design. I’d rather sit in a 1990 ZR1 any day.
I’m already starting to see chirping from all the keyboard warriors online claiming that this new ZR1X for whatever reason is not a hypercar. At a gathering I attended over the weekend, this was also a brief topic of conversation there too. The general consensus there seemed to be “we’ll see”. It’s hard to deny that this new Corvette has the numbers and definitely has the look. It’s got correct layout and all the goodies required, the interior looks great (be gone tower of buttons), so what gives?
I think part of the reason that Corvette is judged the way that it is, is because of what it means to people early on and how and when they become acquainted with it. So many US based car enthusiasts first real exposure to cool cars comes from Corvette and that’s likely a big part of what’s holding it back perceptionally. You’d like to think that your tastes refine and that you move on to bigger and better things than what first capture your imagination as a child. Some people come to terms with that and dig into it and it becomes part of their long-term identity. However, in this world of bigger, faster, stronger, more that’s something that becomes a little bit difficult for a lot of people to swallow.
We like to paint that mental picture of the Hawaiian shirt, white sock, Oakley Blade, New Balance sneaker guy being the standard Corvette fan, but the fact is, almost all of us have been there at some point. We’ve all lusted after and had a real genuine appreciation for this car somewhere during the course of our lives and whether or not we want to admit it to others, a lot of us wouldn’t be here without it.
Of course, the ZR1X is exciting on a lot of levels, but it’s real contribution may be that it finally and legitimately puts Corvette where it’s always deserved to be: sitting atop the mountain, as the bona fide King of the Hill…..
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge