The Corvette, however, was different... It was light, powerful, and made to handle like a real sportscar. The looks of it always caught my eye, and when I witnessed a completely factory one take 1st place at a national autocross event in Milwaukee, WI, I knew I might just have to buy one some day.

 Thus, cash in hand, I begun my search for the perfect car... I looked at everything; Nissans, Subarus, Mitsubishis, BMW, Mercedes, I checked cars on Ebay, autotrader, carmax, I asked questions on car forums, asked people in the tuning industry.. I even contemplated buying a couple of different not-so-fast cars and modifying them (for example, buying a Nissan 350Z and twin turboing the factory V6 motor). I concluded that, for the price, nothing could touch the Corvette in speed, braking, and handling. That was it; it was time to buy one....

 But I didn't want just any Corvette... Coming from the boosted world where 2litres can net you 400 horsepower, I had a real problem with buying a car that had an engine displacing 5.7 litres of air and only making 355hp from it. Plus 355hp was old news to me; my RS was already making more than that, and that car weighted considerably less than a 'vette. Nah, I had to have the Z06.

 Like the STI from Subaru, the Corvette Z06 is like a regular Corvette but with less weight, a stiffer suspension, thicker sway bars, better tires, a higher redline, better engine heads and a more aggressive camshaft bringing power up to 405HP and 400ft-lbs of torque. In a 3100lbs car. This one was the one to get.

 Like all my previous vehicles, I found the one for me on Ebay, at a hugely discounted price. Also, like both my previous cars, I had never even sat in a Corvette before I bought one. I won the auction and got a plane ticket to Talahasse, FL, where my car would be waiting for me. I looked it over carefully; it had 18000 miles and had been kept in a garage all its life; never even been driven in the rain. The seller asked me if I wanted to take a test drive... "Nah, its OK", I said. "I'll call you if I have any problems". I got in, started it up, and proceeded to drive 500 miles back to North Carolina, where I was living at the time.

 The Car:

 On the road, the Z06 was fearsomely fast. I though I had a fast car when I drove the STI, but this was on an entirely new level! Dropping it down to 3rd gear and flooring it would result in the kind of acceleration that could take my radar detector off its mounts!

The Engine

The designation for the Z06's engine is "LS6". The shortblock and rotating assembly are the same as its lower output variant, the LS1, however it has a more agressive camshaft and better flowing heads, resulting in more power and a higher redline. The basic architecture is a pushrod, 2 valves per cylinder, 5.7Litre V8. Technologically, it is about as advanced as a propeller plane... However, you can't argue with the results:
 The pushrod design makes the engine lighter and more compact, allowing it to fit under the Corvette's low slung hood, creating a very aerodynamic shape
 405 horsepower, 400 foot pounds of torque. On 91 octane. 6500RPM redline.

 Unlike my highly boosted 4 cylinders, it also doesn't tend to blow up at regular intervals if you drive it hard. In fact, during development GM drives several Corvettes full throttle, at their maximum speed, for an entire tank of gas. This engine is actually designed to make 405HP all the time, not 405HP for a short burst of time like most modified engines; it is strong, well built, and supremely reliable. I blew up 4 engines on my RS to end up with something that made less power, less reliably than this, so I can definitely appreciate this aspect of the engine.

 Because it makes so much torque, the car is geared to run very low RPMs in 6th gear (about 2000RPM at 70MPH). Because of this, it gets 28miles to the gallon on the freeway. This is almost unheard of in the sports car world.

 I still think the architecture is archaic and the specific output sucks (71Hp/L), but if you could find a way to get 405hp out of a couple mice on a treadmill and get it to run reliably all day, consume very little fuel and sound like this, I might complain, but I would buy it just the same :)

Brakes, Tires and Traction:

 Interior:

 There is also a lot of interior noise; tire noise, engine noise, wind noise, transmission noise... This is a sporstcar and it feels and sounds like one. The noise never bothered me, but it might bother some.

 What I did like was the dashboard though. Very informative and well laid out.

Heads Up Display:

 Mods:

 The Journey:

 The day I bought this car in Talahasse, FL, I drove it up to Ralleigh, NC where I was living. A month later I drove it up to New York, to meet my parents, and then New York to LA, by way of Chicago. The NY - Chicago drive took exactly 10 hours and 9 minutes (from 42nd street in Manhattan to Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago). Aside from Nebraska, which was painfully boring, this was the greatest drive I've ever taken.

 It took 37 hours :)

In Utah I found out that the engine hits redline at 179MPH in 5th gear, and shifting into 6th moves it too far from the powerband for it to continue accelerating. I didn't get pulled over a single time in the entire trip and averaged about 25.6MPG across the entire country, despite driving fast.

The End

I really enjoyed owning this car; the looks I got driving it, the power, the speed... But it never really felt "right". Much like my STI always made me miss the acceleration of my swapped 2.5RS, the Z06 made me miss the traction and predictable handling of my STI; after 6000 miles of driving, getting on the gas expecting to be rewarded by acceleration and instead having to correct a fishtail as the car put rubber down on the road at 50 miles an hour got old and I still hadn't gotten to the point where I felt I could really trust the car at the limit; I found it hard to judge exactly where the handling limits were, and how it would behave once those were exceeded.

 But also, since buying this car,  had been eying up something else... Something... Newer :)