Cars.com's Dave Thomas reviews the new 2008 Chevrolet Corvette Z06.
Transcript
(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Dave Thomas with Cars.com. When we review cars we look at things like, fuel efficiency, reliability and safety to recommend cars for different people.
But sometimes with a car like the Corvette Z06, we throw all that out the window. You might not tell just from looking at it, but the Z06 is radically different than a regular Corvette. First of all, she has a big engine upfront, but the frame is also made out of aluminum, so it's lighter weight and just check out the size of these tires. So from the back, one easy way to tell you're behind a Z06 rather than a regular Corvette is the size of that tire. The Z06 is a high-performance machine and when we say that we're not kidding. Has 505 horsepower, 7.0-liter engine, it's all going to the rear-wheel. So we wouldn't blame any Chevy dealers for not letting the casual walk-in test-drive it, but all they really need to do to sell one of these, is do this. (engine revving) The interior of the Z06 is not so high performance. GM is updating its entire fleet with better and better interiors every year, but the Corvette stuck somewhere in the last decade. So when you look at everything inside, it kind of looks old, but luckily for Corvette, everyone should be looking that way. Because you can take the Z06 straight from the street to the track, Chevy has given you a little convenient button right here. Which moves the Corvette from kind of a nanny mode for when you're on the street where the traction control is on and you have some extra safety features and you hit it once and it turns off that traction control system, you hit it another time and it goes into what they call competitive driving mode and that's for the track, that's for hardcore driving. So the question is what would you do with 505 horsepower, even in the Z06 Corvette? And you really can't use all of that horsepower every day, going from point A to point B. Where it really comes in handy is, you know, on the highway, you can obviously pass anyone you want to in a split-second, you can take on-ramps and off-ramps like you're on a race track. It's just a superb driving machine. Now of course, the best place to use this is actually on a real track, that's what a lot of drivers will do with the Z06. And in that way, if you're going from home to the track and back on a highway, there's simply no better car. So now you've seen with the Z06 can do. And the question is, would we recommend it? Yeah, we'd recommend it. You might not take a speeding ticket yellow here as your color of choice, black or blue would probably be better. But for the money $70,000 and the performance, there isn't a better buy out there. <v Announcer>For additional information on this car or any other, go to Cars.com and our blog, KickingTires.
