Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And welcome to a special podcast. That's the se on. We're in a special live drive.
That's the se on of a Corvette ZR1 in Australia. Look what I want. Free to the show, welcome. What is ZR1?
It's a ZR6. Is that a difference? Is it ZR06? I think the ZR1 has a same engine as the expert between Toyota.
Ah, okay. On top because this isn't enough. Because it's 700 horsepower. 700 horsepower is not enough.
So you're gonna turn it on the ZR1. It's basically, if you compare it to any Australia it's almost like your GDSRs. It's almost your top of the line. W1?
W1, yeah. So, we're in, if you remember about it, two years ago we drove the original Stingray that you got, the first one in the country. Is this probably the first ZR6? No, I actually was a bit lower down at least on this one because I hadn't specked the way I wanted.
There was about 30 of the cars that came out and they were specked the way GMS V could charge it. And that's what happened with your first one. You didn't get to pick the car up. It was whatever came out of the tin.
Whereas this one actually was prepared to wait for the one I wanted to. I got the speck I wanted. I knew I'd actually test driven one of the combined cars in Australia before. I finalised the speck on the one I wanted so I knew exactly what I wanted and why I wanted it.
Yeah, so interior wise, it's pretty much, other than the colours, it's similar to the Stingray setup. They haven't really upgraded anything, have they? I think the autonomous braking and lane departure things, there's a couple of safety things that they've brought in. The battery is model that previous model didn't have.
Because a lot of the car companies update as I go along, they don't really wait for a new model. They just sort of add in extra features. If the gummy requires it with petrol savings and things like that, with these ones the other end of the scale. The steering was like a carbon fibre.
It's still got that hexagonal type shape. That's the autonomous with Corvette. But maybe interior wise, it's pretty room. Yeah.
The one thing I like about this one is I didn't think it would be as comfortable as a daily driver. If I wanted to use it, I don't use it as a daily driver. But also the fact that sometimes you get the life that's in the car with you and she doesn't want it to be ridiculously noisy and uncomfortable and rough. And since I got a great dad road, good move.
That's right. I'm not feeling every bump, but I'm assuming this is... Yeah. It's probably smoother than a BMW.
They benchmarked this one. One of them does a test that came out this week and they did a 0-150 mile an hour back to 0. And this thing even leaked the GT3 RS. So for something that's comparable in terms of the performance, it's actually pretty good that it's quite drivable in terms of like comfort.
Yeah. The thing that you tend to sort of look at is how you use it if I have to use it every day. This one is one that you can actually use. Yeah, we're bottling along.
We can hear each other talk. We haven't worked it up properly, but we're just getting out of the layer that was parked in. But like I said, yeah, you're right. You can put along, you can take your wife's girlfriend out and boyfriend.
It's a Corvette in Australia, not in America. And yeah, you can drive it. And then I'm sure there's buttons in this mode where you can just wake it up. That's the way it goes.
The variance that came out is this variant and then there was another option called the Z07 option. And the Z07 option is a little bit more expensive. The byproduct of that option is slightly stiffer swings. It came with the car, the actual car and fiber wheels.
But you could, your drive modes and your spring setup is far more track focused. So one of the things that I did when I was deciding what I wanted and how I was going to expect this one, I actually drove one of the full Z07 spec cars through the Denville Mountains in Victoria. One of them up there and I got to drive a non-Z07 spec car. And the Z07 spec car, even in the softest settings, was actually much slower around twisty Australian country roads because it was so sharp that you need smooth bitumen like a racetrack to actually explore the engine.
To make it work, yeah. To make it work. So when you drive that setup and you drive it on rough, corrugated roads, bumps, and your undulations in the road, you need a level of compliance to actually get into grip. So even in the softest suspension settings in that car, I was probably 5, 6% slower through the corners than what I could get by dialing this down to a softest setting on those roads and then still being able to get that compliance through the corners.
The other thing that that car came with was it was it was specced with the cover race Michelin's and they're great on a racetrack once you've activated the temporary car. If you drive it on a 15 degree day in Sydney and some lady in a camry pulls up in front of you in the middle of winter, you're actually going to go through it. And you don't want a car like this where you're going to be able to use it and enjoy it. It's actually a bit compromised in a simple situation like driving in the traffic because you can't pull up, you haven't activated enough heat and temperature in the tyre to be able to warm up to stop.
And it's a proper race time. When you say track focus, it's track focus. Track focus, you know, 3-8-3, warm up, laps are activated, get it warmed up to the point where it's going to grip and do what it's meant to do. You're not going to do warm ups on the street.
You can't. So I chose that spec and I expect the carbon ceramic race to do a little bit of track racing. But it's not the predominant use of the car. If I was going to use it only for track work, then I might consider those in a certain packet.
If you're going to use a place of 60-70% of it for road use, it doesn't do the car justice. I'm going to put some photos on the net later. It's called hypersonic road, actually, it's not the colour. Oh really?
This is the only zealousy in Australia in the hypersonic road? It's like a liquid. Yeah, it really doesn't stand. It's a nice colour.
It's stealthy. But the other Corvette was like, shout, shout. It was in the Ferrari colour. What colour was that called?
I think it was called Red Mist. Red Mist with a yellow, or the brown leather in two hours. I've got a good card and released about where this one you can hear coming. Like this.
It's a spot where we can hear it. You know, you're way around it? Yeah, this is a test track. OK, it's this.
We're on our private test track. Not in Mexico, but north. I think it crossed. OK.
Yep. Changes, yeah. The graphics got caught, it's racing. Yeah, the track, cool.
It looks like it's something from a video game. But the changes, suspension feel, steering, rebound rates, stiffness, even the number of locks locked on the steering. The severity of the shift on the transmission as well as it. And the dashes change.
So you've got your oil pressure, you've got your tire pressures, you've got your temperatures. It's all there. The tacos are right across like a bar that changes colour. I'd say the taste.
Look at the Tesla, alright, OK? That's, I feel like I was doing stomach crunches. I was just backing my gut, backing the seat. Oh, mate.
What a nice feeling. Nice and smooth. Do you changes? Yeah, it's actually, I'm quite impressed with the way the delivery of the power is.
If we were on a motorway and we had a little bit more space, you can almost hold it 5,500,000 revs. And then as you throttle on, it'll literally, it's like a next snap every time. And then as soon as it goes to the next gear, it does the same thing. The thing that I also like in terms of the driveability, because it's naturally aspirated, there's no supercharger, there's no turbo to kick in.
Once you pitch it into a corner, you can almost steer it through the corner off the throttle, which is a really good feeling if... It was not let up. It was smooth. Like I said, I was pinching my head, wasn't jerking back and forth.
I was even under the brakes. The car stopped on a dime. Traction, it felt safe. It was tracking straight.
It was not out of control. And I was expecting today, like a wild animal. And this is like, this is raining, but not, you know what I mean? It's very usable.
The thing that I also think is, I'm impressed with in terms of the way they've done it. The torque delivery and the power, the car is actually, it's trackable. It's almost like a scalpel. You can feel the road, like it's like your fingertips are touching the road through the steering.
The whole concept of the person in America that actually ticks the box for this car, they're not ticking it because they want the straight line speed. There's a couple of youtubers that have put like, drag slicks on this car, and they've got nine lines out of it. Just on a prep drag surface. No modifications to the car.
Just the, I think they put pizza colors on the front, they'll put drag radios on back. But that's not what it's for. No. It's for the bloke that takes it out to the race track every three or four weeks.
And that's why they moved it. And they wanted to do it for ten years. And that's why they moved the engine at the back, when the middle. That's the thing that I thought when they brought the ZR.
Is that all one? Yep. That's a 1064 horsepower. This is about 700.
One of the things I liked about that configuration is that when you've got this one, you start to think to yourself, is it enough? No, no, no, no, no, no. Well, there's never enough. What I actually like about from an engineering point of view, they didn't change the engine.
They just went up to two of that. So it tells me that yes, that person who ticks that box is probably going to drag race and illustrate. They're going to go crazy. But it's unlikely to be the car that they track every single day in the race track.
This thing, if it can cope with twin turbo on top of what it's got, then it's 700. It's probably very, very, very comfortable. It's not a highly strong engine. And Corvette engines have always been brought up for general motors engines.
They're not, like, that was never the weekly. The weekly quires we got with the last model, the C7 was like, we've now gone as far as we can. We've got that much power with this much traction and having a front engine car. And that's why they had to rebuild this and put the engine in the middle.
Because now they can put 1,000 horsepower from the factory without worrying about it, where those numbers were unheard of five, six, seven years ago. But you can now turn and drive and know that you can come back home and start it again the next morning. And you know what? The thing that I like about it, and I know everyone benchmarks it against things like the GT3 RAs.
You can't take the GT3 RAs away from the weekend and you'll have to go to a winery and hacks and climbs in it and have a nice trip. And this one you can actually use for that. I love the fact that you can do both. Sometimes I might not want to sacrifice the performance, but occasionally I might want to go for a nice country driver.
I'm not driving at 10, 10, but I want to go to a restaurant and I want to take a wife along with me and enjoy that day. And you can. You can. You just proved to get into the track here.
It was easy to put along and it wasn't scary or I'm going to control it or no. You could drive it to the shops, but you don't want to park it there. But it's got all this creature car. It's not skimped.
They have not skimped. They have not. There's no missing buttons. They have the same sort of design as the other one.
This is the target top. I take the roof off and put it. The other one is the carbon roof. I've got another roof at home.
To match it. To match it. Money. Roughly.
You're fast at walking. Not what you pay. For most of the dealers, they're sort of offloading the full ZO 7 pack around the four, four, four, fifty mark. It's on a little bit less.
If you don't get the base trim, I think you'll probably get it on road close to 400. Just don't know. Can you still have the sting right now? They still bring in.
Well, they sell much GM SV. That's the price. Yeah, it's about 20 grand. What are the weightless now?
I don't think there's a weightless on those ZOs anymore. I think you'll find there's still a weightless on those ZO6. I don't know whether they're going to limit the numbers or not. I think they're brought about 70 cars to the country.
At one stage, there was a few people who speculated on car sales and a criminal for sales. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. You did well in your first time.
Oh, yeah, I made money. Yeah, there was a bit of a weight. We had that GFC, COVID period. There was a bit of a limited edition.
It was a big demand in America as well. Right hand drive with one of their list. You did well with the first one. But this is next level.
Congratulations again. Thank you for reaching out and giving us an opportunity to get a live drive in the ZO6. ZO6. ZO6.
ZO6. ZO6. ZO6. ZO6.
So, mate, thank you very much again. And I'll probably see you at the next class. I don't like to do the other one. So, yeah.
I don't use it too much. No, no. It's got two and a half thousand Ks on. It's next trip and it's the time to get out.
Let's take a look at these and create these. Yeah. Alright, let's do it. Mate, thank you again.
Awesome.