Gadgetory

well we do have a supercharger here because the power is oh yeah whew and are you this is the new golden age of horsepower but for the most part brawny cars today do it with much smaller displacement and a lot more attack under the hood except with a big vent which keeps things big let's drive the king of the big bets the zo6 and check the big American style tech so what is a zo6 it's basically king of a hill right now in the c7 seventh generation Corvette you take what's already an impressive 6.2 liter v8 face car and then you add a bunch of brawn a supercharger on top of that v8 a standard 7-speed manual with rev matching magnetic we illogical adaptive suspension standard wider fenders up front to cover way bigger wheels and treads all kinds of radical airflow and cooling management around the body and a steel-reinforced Jesus bar where the view use it new 4:16 you've got a front kerbin chin camera a rear lid that doesn't require you to slam it it cinches itself and carplay or Android auto with carplay out first but you don't buy a car like this to play with your smartphone yep I have to play with a motorized screen instead I can't get enough of that okay let's get serious 7-speed manual gearbox this is bass but notice our manual has paddles on the wheel those are your toggles to turn on or off rev matching we'll try that on the road and the track momentarily now down here is your mode controller for the vehicle and it's very simple compared to like a BMW M car there's weather eco-tour which is normal sport and track not a ton of variables around that under the home menu is something you won't find on any other car we Chevy MyLink and that's this the PDR the performance data recorder which is a misnomer it's a forward-looking video camera that also has a data recorder that overlays telemetry on the HD view forward this is basically a smart GoPro built in the car and no one else does it quite like this and generally around the cabin this is a mix of traditional and modern cabin technology a partial LCD instrument panel but real gauges around it for other functions you got your touch screen here of course but a ton of tactile knobs right below it now the simplest headline around zo6 is that the engine is supercharged and here's your supercharger and plant them right at the top and I mean right at the top look at this thing it just barely fits in the profile of the engine bay it's right here at the height of the hood gasket so when you add some mass on top you want to lower it on the bottom as a result this engine has dry sump lubrication a very shallow pan below to keep overall height managed and not add a bunch of tall center of gravity killing mass and in between those two components you've got tougher forged internals to handle the chaos that this guy brings upon them and you've also got stronger better breathing high-performance heads the output numbers are a pleasant pair 650 horse 650 pound feet of torque 7-speed manuals bass you can get an 8-speed automatic I won't be speaking to you after that however with that 8-speed in a high performance package you can get to zero to 60 down under 3 seconds for this 3500 pounds worth event and should you care the average mpg is 18 that's not bad for something that puts out 650 gets there partly because of direct injection and very much because of cylinder deactivation you never get used to this kind of big power I'll be honest I'm more of a naturally aspirated kind of guy I kind of like that smooth linear feel but this is just a hoot now we're at the simraceway performance driving center at Sonoma a course layout that constantly reminds you how light and sharp the turn in is on this car coupled with that responsive throttle this Vette feels about half its weight I'm in let's say sport mode right now and I've got tremendous power I've got great throttle ability I do not even miss the rev matcher when it's on or off because this engine blips and modulates so beautifully which is interesting for a great big engine it breathes very lightly I would say it's not hard to get it up or down on the rev clock because it's a nimble set of internals this Vette has a perfect 50:50 weight spread largely because that 7-speed manual I'm working is a transaxle not a transmission in other words it's located at the back of the car instead of ganging it up all lopsided ly with the engine at the front of the car nice gearbox and clutch by the way Corvettes used to have condom kind of horsey drivelines in the last couple generations not anymore this guy is just easy to drive but man is there some stuff under there get the magneto rheological adaptive suspensions doing wonders of course to keep me in good shape that's also the technology that will keep you enjoying your zo6 on the ride home after the track okay done up seeing that style of zo6 is going to start you about 80,000 for with a 7-speed manual it's for the coupe by the way more for the convertible then there's that zero seven additional Performance Package 7,500 bucks I'm gonna pass I'm good here 1,800 for the PDR track recorder with telemetry laid over the video at a love back I'm all-in now you're at about eighty to two out the door the way I do more cars driven CNET style standing by now at CNET on cars.com click on the road