2006 Z06 Part 2

The Chevrolet Corvette rolled out of Flint, Michigan in 1953 and has never stopped—eight generations, no domestic rivals left standing. It nearly didn't happen. Fiberglass over a 3.9-liter straight-six, two-speed automatic, Chevrolet's answer to the lean British roadsters of the postwar years—it debuted at GM's Motorama in the Waldorf-Astoria and promptly sold almost none of its 300 hand-assembled units. A quiet beginning for what would become The Corvette Z06 re-emerges in 2006 after a brief hiatus, shedding its fixed-roof coupe body in favor of a fastback silhouette stretched low and taut over a lightweight aluminum frame. Under the hood sits Chevrolet's LS7—a 7.0-liter V-8 whose titanium connecting rods spin with the kind of precision more at home in an aircraft engine than a production car, wringing out 505 horsepower in the process. That figure translates to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds, a number that feels abstract until the moment it doesn't. In back-to-back testing, the Z06 dispatches the Dodge Viper SRT10 without ceremony, though the Porsche 911 Turbo and Ferrari F430—each commanding a significantly steeper price—ultimately prove to be a different conversation entirely.