The 2019 Chevy Corvette ZR1 Is the Ultimate Corvette

This is a

2019

Chevy Corvette ZR1 and it is simply the craziest Corvette ever. There's a 6.2-liter supercharged v8 here that makes 755 horsepower and 715 pound-feet of torque. This car goes 0-60 in 3.1 seconds and will do 211 miles per hour, this one cost us over $140, but if you like cars even a little, you probably know all that. Today I will show you the rest. I borrowed this zr1 from a viewer near Annapolis, Maryland and it has its own youtube channel called dhr street speed. You can check it out at the link in the description below and frankly you should check it out because besides this zr1 he also has a zl1, a dodge demon, a jeep trackhawk, an old mustang gt500 and a viper it's quite a collection but today we're going to focus first on the zr1.

A little history. Now the zr1 originally appeared on the third generation

corvette

in the 1960s and

chevy

has come and gone since then and over time it has come to mean. the definitive

corvette

in the range, but this is the definitive corvette in history. It has more power than any Lamborghini Aventador. It has the same top speed as a super fast Ferrari 812 and has more torque than a Lexus LFA, in fact it has twice the torque. of a lexus lfa and then some, so today i'm going to take you on a tour of the zr1 and show you all the cool quirks and features of the

ultimate

corvette and then get behind the wheel. and take it out on the road, which already scares me a little and then I'll give it a dig score and for more of my thoughts on the zr1, click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer where I am.

We've also compiled a list of the cheapest corvettes currently for sale on autotrader. Now we start here with the wing because this wing is one of the largest I have seen mounted on any street legal car; in fact, if you look closely, we will see that there is the normal Corvette body and on top of it there is a small rear spoiler and then this rear spoiler is mounted on the other rear spoiler, so this card basically has two, the big one is Absolutely huge and comes as part of the performance package. Interestingly, you can choose two different wing options.

You can have this if you're serious about racetrack use or you can get the low wing if you just want a stealthier zr1 which also gives it a higher top speed as it reduces drag, but how? Could you not understand this now? One of the most interesting things about this wing is what it does to the cargo area. I'll start with the hatch itself. Take a look at the hatch opening with the wing behind, you can see the wing. It was clearly designed with the hatch in mind, it only clears it a quarter of an inch, basically enough so you can clean the hatch and stick your little finger in there and that's it, now a couple of other interesting things about the hatch because of this .

Wing one is just loading stuff into the back of this car, the wing lifts up about nine inches off the already high cargo floor, so you can't load stuff from the direct rear of this car like you can in any other car, basically everything. what you load in the back of the zr1 has to be from the sides, which is strange, if you want to take this car to go golfing for example, you will have to load your golf clubs from above the steering wheel, but that is the price you pay. Having the monster wing is another interesting thing about the rear spoiler and cargo area because it's hard to get your hand in there to close the tailgate because of how close the tailgate is to the rear spoiler.

Chevy has done the tailgate on this car. In other words, with soft close, if you just close it almost all the way, the zr1 will automatically close it the rest of the way so you don't have to fumble around trying to reach under the wing to slam it into place. That's a well thought out design. Next I move to the front, as I mentioned, that spoiler is part of the performance package, which is an option on the 2995. The performance package also includes a sport suspension and special sport summer tires, but my favorite performance package. The item is here, they are these little end caps on the front splitter.

Now the front splitter itself is crazy, but the end caps make it look even crazier and more aggressive, and my favorite part is that they cover part of the reflector that is required by federal regulation. you get a regular corvette you get the full size reflector you get a zr1 with the performance package you don't need that shitty full size reflector you're better than that and it hides half the reflector next we get to a couple of other exterior elements unique to the zr1 that should be mentioned, starting with the side skirts which are carbon fiber, they look very attractive, but also the other interesting thing about them is that they curve about in the middle, so when you get out of the car, you don't step on them. accidentally and that little curve prevents you from damaging them.

Now no such concern was given about the damage to the front splitter, which is also unique to the zr1, it is carbon fiber. huge and is very low. I hope Chevrolet builds a large stock of these front splitters because I strongly suspect many zr1 owners will take them off and scrape them on curbs and low driveways. Another interesting exterior element on the zr1 would be In my opinion the hood is the craziest part of the exterior of this car, other than the rear spoiler of course, just look at it from that angle, you can see where the normal Corvette hood would be and then you can see where it is.

The zr1's hood sticks out like an extra four inches beyond that just because this engine and its supercharger are so big, but that's not the best part, the best part is when you open the hood, because when you open the hood wide on this car it has a hole this car has a hole in the hood let me explain now, the previous generation of the zr1 came out in 2009 and that was right when the trend of having glass covers over the hood was starting so you could see the engine from the outside of the car now Chevy decided to follow that trend with the latest generation of the ZR1, so they put a small glass cover on the hood so you could see inside the engine, unfortunately the part that was visible on the engine looked like a piece of plastic. and it was a very small glass cover and everyone made fun of the old zr1 for that.

I spoke to some engineers and designers of the new zr1 when it was revealed and you could tell there was still a bit of sensitivity to being teased. that glass window, so this car forgoes the glass treatment and instead, this piece in the middle, the one that stays in place when you open the rest of the hood, is actually the engine instead of having a cover so you can see the engine that this car has. The real engine here, always on display, is the top of the supercharger, so yes, in a Ferrari you can look inside and see the engine, but in this car you can touch it and that's a cool thing, but as cool as it is, There are some interesting issues that come with the engine having such a high supercharger.

One of them is the fact that in Europe all cars must have an inch or two of cushioning between the hood and the hard parts of the engine, so that if the car hits a pedestrian when it hits the top of the car and the hood there is some protection before hitting the hard stuff on the engine unfortunately the top of this hood is the engine so by designing the car this way Chevy basically had to admit that they would never do that. I sell any of these in Europe. The other problem with supercharging the engine so high is visibility from the front seat.

See how it looks when you're sitting there. You can see that this actually blocks visibility of even the smallest ones. The zr1 badge on either side of the engine on the hood actually blocks your view slightly. I've never seen a situation before where an emblem blocked your vision. Then we move on to the cargo area and you'll notice at first glance that it's surprisingly large back here there aren't many 700+ horsepower cars with that much cargo space. An interesting element in the cargo area are the cargo covers, which are quite unusual rather than a retractable cargo cover like you might find on a hatchback, your typical Volkswagen Golf.

It has sort of two covers that need to be installed, one for the front of the cargo area and one for the rear of the cargo area. They're a little cumbersome and not that easy, but I guess you should be happy. Your load is covered in a 700+ horsepower sports car. Also interesting here is an item that the zr1s come with and that would be these little foam protectors for the brake rotor when you remove the wheels and tires to change this car. to put on your track tires, for example, you're supposed to put on those little protectors now in 50 years at the Pebble Beach auctions.

I suspect the zr1s that will make the most money will be the cars that have like zero miles. I never drove it, the tires and wheels were never removed and those foam protectors were never taken out of their giant ziploc bag, but that won't be this car. I say this because the owner of this car is one of my favorite car owners I've ever met. while filming these videos largely because he drives his cars and uses them quite a bit, he has a racing license, he goes to the race track even though he owns a lot of cars that a lot of people keep in hermetically sealed storage units for safekeeping. there are no miles to one day be worth 250,000 in barrett-jackson but that is not his attitude and that is proven by the fact that just above the shift lever he has a small plaque that says built in bowling green kentucky usa and has his name and I said Dave, you know, when you go sell this, people will say, you know you devalued the car, you get your name on there, the next guy won't want it as much and he looked at me and I said I don't care about the next one and that's exactly the Attitude I appreciate most with cars like this: you don't want to put them away and never let anyone drive them like, say, a Ferrari Enzo.

Now I should mention that it is not. like the owner of this car made that little license plate himself, that's an option chevrolet offers zr1 customers and it's surprisingly cheap. I'm looking here at the window decal and custom license plate with the name and vin, so each different car is unique. they had to make one for each vehicle, it's only 200, that seems like a deal if this thing was a Porsche, it would be like a 1900 option, an item that was expensive, how about five thousand dollars for the custom selectable vinyl? I asked Dave. choose this vin specifically you just asked for the lowest vin possible which is a pretty penny and since we're talking window stickers take a look at this one this car starts at 118.9 which is a reasonable bargain this one has 24 000 in options, curiously.

I have included the gas guzzler tax as an option. If you were buying a zr1, you wouldn't have that option, huh, but anyway, the total cost of the car comes to 143,995, which probably makes it the most expensive Corvette of all time, but. Anyway, moving on from the window sticker, I'll show you some of the other quirks and features inside the ZR1. Now it's worth noting that I did a z06 corvette review and covered a lot of this stuff, so I'm going to skip a lot of what I covered in the z06 review. I'll cover some of the same highlights, of course, I also found some interesting new quirks and features and I'll spend a little more time with this car, but I'm going to To start with the doors to get out of a corvette, most people You don't know it but there's no handle on the door you press a little button and it's an electronic release that lets you get out but what if you're driving and your battery dies well they have a manual release on the floor and in the driver's or passenger's footwell.

I really like the manual releases on these corvettes, they're like hieroglyphics, the first one shows what you're supposed to do with your finger and then the next one shows the person getting out of the car and then the last one shows you can read more about it at the owner's manual. Next we must discuss the headers that are now shown on many general motor vehicles and many general motor vehicles. We now have a head-up display that projects vital information onto the windshield in front of the driver so you don't have to look at the gauge cluster when driving.

The strange thing about this car is that it projects it like this. right on that hood bump, so the head-up display is kind of competing for visibility with that hood bump and it kind of makes it hard to read the head-up display, but I mean, do you want the giant supercharger? or not? These are the kind of things you have to deal with Next you can see the zr1 has an infotainment system which is no surprise all cars have this is a touch screen. The unusual thing is that you can turn it down, press thesmall screen button and then the screen folds out and reveals a hidden storage compartment behind the infotainment screen.

Police officers stopping corvettes. Something to think about and how we can talk about the interior of this car without discussing the heated seat and the strangest cooled seat buttons configured throughout. automotive industry the driver's seat has a button for the heated seat and a button for the cold seat it is not surprising that on the passenger side that button is on the far right, next to the farthest air vent near the door , there is a heated seat button and a cooled seat button but interestingly, there is also a heated seat button and a cooled seat button in the middle of the passenger side center console, so the passenger has two different places you can go to turn on your heated seat or your cooled seat. passenger seat in a corvette and you will be bathed in luxury with heated and cooled seat buttons basically everywhere you touch next another interesting thing in this car this vehicle has an eight speed automatic and you know it because it says eight speeds on the side top of the shifter my question, of course, is why do you think people would be sitting here driving people around their zero one, yes, I have eight speeds, yes, yes, I have eight speeds, you just get seven speeds, but I have eight, oh, okay, next I'll move on to some of the things on the screen, probably my favorite.

The thing is the fact that it shows the engine hours and revolutions, not many cars show it most cars only show the odometer but on this one you can tell how long the engine has been running and apparently how many revolutions it has accelerated. I also like the different different display themes on the gauge cluster and check out the track, tell me that just doesn't look good, I mean it looks like you really are a hardcore track focused driver in your zr1, it which frankly a lot of people who buy these will probably be next moving on to the central infotainment screen this car has a performance data recorder like many performance cars it can basically tell it to start and stop your lap and It will tell you how fast it was and give you various other readings.

The cool thing about this one is that it has a camera, the camera is built in here and it points and you can look back at your previous laps as well as get performance readings and that kind of stuff, and that's cool. but the best thing about the camera is that you can use it in valet mode; In fact, there is a little setting that allows you to activate it automatically when you put the car in valet mode and that way you can always monitor what the valets are doing when you are giving them your ZR1 for a night on the town.

I also like that this car has several different applications, like any GM vehicle, frankly, with this mylink infotainment system, but it's a little strange, for example, when you go into the weather and it gives you a three-day forecast or you can see a five-day forecast and you can put it in a place and it will tell you what the weather will be like in that place and it will give you an hourly forecast and a five-day forecast, in other words. you're driving a 750 horsepower car that will give you a five day weather forecast, that's the world we live in now.

Anyone who says cars are getting boring, well, I don't think so, but they are getting more informative in the coming year. A couple of interesting settings in the infotainment system, one is in the navigation settings, you can tell the card to avoid fairies or tolls or whatever is pretty standard, you can also tell it to avoid slow traffic, what? who would disable it if you are using a navigation system? system yes, I want to avoid slow traffic. Are there people out there like you? I want to go straight to the heart of the slow traffic. I want to know what that's like.

Another interesting element to the infotainment system is that there is a teen driver mode. I suspect you can limit the speed or something or at least maybe limit the power output when you give the car to your teenage driver. It seems strange to have a 750 horsepower car with a teen driver mode, but at least it gives you that option if If a parent thinks their 17-year-old son is ready for a zr1, the next interesting item in the information system and entertainment would be the number of radio favorites. You can set it to show most cars. Just play six, eight, maybe 10 radio presets.

This car can go pretty high my question is who really wants it to go that high? Are there people out there who say? 44 is simply not enough. I need to watch 46 of my favorite radio channels at all times and another interesting element this car has. Remote starter that you can start it from, for example if you approach it in the driveway and want it to start warming up or cooling down before you get in. One interesting thing about the remote starter: there is a setting here that allows you to configure whether the car will remotely turn on the heated seats or the cooled seats based on the temperature outside, so if you walk to the car on a very warm day and you press it, the car will start cooling your seat before you even get in, which is a very luxurious feature.

The next step is to go back to the outside of the zr1. An interesting element of this car is that they also sell a convertible version. Now this is the 4th generation zr1. There was one in the '60s. There's one in the '80s. The one from the 2000s and then this one and they've never offered a convertible before, but now they're on this one, now the interesting thing is it's a convertible, this panel here It stands up and there is a place in the back where you can store it. a nice sunny day to enjoy your zr1 experience.

I demonstrated it in my z06 video linked below so I won't show it to you again, but believe me, it gets up and it only weighs 16 pounds, but for those of you who don't. I don't think a pop-up roof panel is the experience of a full convertible. You can get a real zr1 with a soft top. Here's another little detail I find interesting about the zr1. You open the door of this 750 horsepower, 210 mile per hour supercar and Lo and behold, there's a little sticker there from the local United Auto 2164 workers at the Bowling Green Kentucky plant.

I promise you a Ferrari 488 doesn't have a sticker like that and speaking of the local 2164, let's see how those people made this sound. the quirks and features of the zr1 and now it's time to take it out on the road and see how the

ultimate

corvette drives. Oh, this is exciting, God, look at that bulge on the hood, I mean, it's a big hug, the only benefit of that wing. although you can actually see it on the camera like it's blocking me, but it's not really, I can look back and it's totally out of my field of vision, man the ride is rough, just a couple of bumps, it's like Oh, the sound is amazing.

It sounds like a supercar, but there is also some American muscle, but the sound is really good, that sound is really cool, the gear changes are not as instantaneous as they are in dual-clutch cars, it's kind of a reality when you pay 140 and not 340 but you're still going from zero to 60 and 3.1 so you probably shouldn't complain, the ride quality is harsh, even if you go over minor things on the pavement you can tell you feel things, however, I'm also sitting. Here I can just turn on my cooled seat. I have the climate control working. I have the latest version of my link with a five day weather forecast.

Wow, well, that was really fast. I wasn't at full speed. It really makes a noise when. Your floor really is like, yeah, we're going to do this and you're going to hear every detail, but the thing is, there are about four corvettes that you need to avoid before you get to this one, so if you've made the decision to get a zr1, don't say oh it's too loud this no one buys this car by accident okay I'm trying to move on here oh my gosh well something I didn't realize is that a shift light comes on when you You get close enough, however, you go so fast that you can't react.

I mean, if I had pulled the paddle when I first saw the shift light, it wouldn't have mattered, it's too fast, oh my god, that's right. just amazing, I mean, it feels as fast as any supercar I've ever driven, it doesn't feel as fast as the 918, but I mean even making that comparison shows what we're talking about here, God, even just a little. a little bit of accelerator that sound is like the world is ending it's like a storm has just appeared in your ear the steering is quite precise the initial turn is not as precise as some exotic European Italians but after that it feels Just so precise and it just stays completely flat and I hear the shift, I mean I'm shifting, hearing the engine go up and down, that's one of the great pleasures, it doesn't feel like a tight Miata when I drove the GT350R.

I was surprised how tight it was. I felt like you couldn't use it in something as small as an autocross, this doesn't feel like that at all, God, is that, I mean, it's as fast as any car most people will ever drive, um, that's not very away from the pace of the p1 hyper car and it's a corvette and you know i drove the old zr1 and it was nothing like this this is just the next level of crazy the old zero one was fast and it felt fast and it felt like it had a lot of freight train power, but this is the complete package, you have the exhaust, we already know what it can do on the track because the old zr1 was quiet, this thing has the look of a much crazier car, this is this is the corvette and that is the

2019

chevy

corvette zr1. now i admit i have never been a huge fan of corvettes but its impossible not to love this thing and while everyone would agree that 140k is no longer cheap like it used to be the previous models of fast corvettes.

It's still a bargain considering it outperforms most supercars in most categories and now it's time to give it an excellent score, starting with the weekend categories and the design of the zr1 looks great , but the design of the Corvette is a little familiar to me and I've always liked it. I felt the c7 was too simple an evolution of the c6 and it gets a 6 out of 10. Acceleration is 0-16 in 3 seconds, so it gets a 9 out of 10. The handling is very precise and easily gets an 8 out of 10. The cool factor is high as this is the most popular new corvette and everyone is very excited about it at the moment and it gets an 8 out of 10.

Finally, there is importance that the zr1 is important in the sense that it is the ultimate corvette. , but if we know anything about the corvette world, we know it won't hold that title for long and it gets a 7 out of 10. That brings the weekend score to 38 out of 50 ahead of the Dodge Demon, the Chevy Camaro ZL1 and the corvette z06 is no surprise in everyday categories starting with features the zero1 has a lot of advantages but falls short of much of the latest modern technology and gets a 6 out of 10. Comfort really isn't and gets a 3. out of 10. quality is good, although there is still more plastic than you would like, especially as prices start to approach 150,000 and it gets a 6 out of 10. practicality is decent, it has a surprising amount of cargo space but only two seats and it gets a three out of ten, it's finally worth it and it's hard to deny that it's excellent, yes it's expensive but it's a bargain compared to other cars with similar numbers and it gets a 9 out of 10, which raises the total daily score at 27. out of 50 lagging behind the Dodge Demon and Camaro ZL1 is also no surprise, as they are larger, more comfortable, more practical cars with rear seats.

Add everything up and the score obtained is 65 out of 100, which is good. Here is a comparison. The Demon barely surpasses it. The demon is a little more practical, more comfortable and a little faster, but otherwise the zr1 surpasses all the latest American high-performance models, but it is still a little behind the European supercars, since they have Higher quality interiors and more impressive styling. Better to beat the zr1 considering they tend to cost about twice as much. The r1 badge on each side of the hood actually blocks you out, the most interesting part is that they curve in the middle of the car presumably, so the other interesting thing about the cargo.

The area and the rear wing is the fact that the rear wing is something or another, oh yeah.