Real Life with the King

Last Update: 10/23/2004

ZR1 hits the streets for a Vette driving impression

by Hib Halverson, ©1989, 1999

By the summer of 1989, writer and ZR-1 Net member, Hib Halverson, had jumped from Corvette Feverto Vette Magazine. His first road test for Vette was written about a 1990 ZR-1 pilot car. Getting a drive in one of those cars in the summer of 1989 for a real-world road test was a stroke-of-luck and a real plumb for his new client.

Halverson didn't tell either his Editor at Vette or the people at Chevrolet that he had a pretty wild idea up his sleeve. Through some previous work for the Road&Track Corvette Special, he knew a place he could test the ZR-1's top speed. He and his pal, race driver Stu Hayner, went out to this remote location in the Mojave Desert east of Los Angeles on a hot August afternoon , set up a radar gun and tested the car at 172 mph.

Needless to say, the article in Vette raised a few eyebrows amongst readers. It was unusual for that magazine to publish a real-world test so far before a new vehicle comes to production. It is fitting that the ZR-1 Net republishes this article exactly ten years to the day, after Halverson tested the car discussed in this article.

Okay, no more "you can look but you can’t touch"! No more "unofficial" power and torque numbers! No more restricted test track driving under Chevrolet eyes! No more orchestrated press junkets in southern France! No more hand-built prototypes! No more frigging delays!

Yes, readers, it is finally time for a real life, daily driver, park it in our garage, impression of the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1–the mystic King of the Hill finally sees the real world!

In early September, Chevrolet was good enough to let the staff of our Los Angeles office have a ZR1 for three and a half days. We got the keys and heard a pleasant, "Have fun." Platform Engineering Director, David R. McLellan, said once that the King "is a Corvette only more so!" After our experience, we agree with Director Dave! Matter of fact, the car is so excellent; we think driving it is better than sex. Ah, well, at least better than bad sex.

In our 72 hours with Its Highness, we drove 567 miles. Naturally, the first activity was to run hard over two of the best twisty roads in the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of L.A. We did the famed Angeles Crest Highway then we ZR1'ed the Glendora Mountain Road. Needless to say, the King lived up to its billing.

The car’s handling is phenomenal. When pushed hard, in part due to its FX3 ride adaptive shocks, the car feels better, is smoother and more balanced than a L98/Z51 coupe. In the ZR1 transformation, the Corvette Development Group has managed to improve on the road manners that have made their car a legend in its own time as well as a lesson to Porsche drivers about "The agony of defeat."

The 125 horse booster shot supplied by the magnificent Chevrolet/Lotus/MerCruiser LT5 V8 and the King's 236 extra pounds have been assimilated with no apparent ill effects other than a slight tendency towards being a bit loose in autocross-type, slow-speed turns. However, one expects and even enjoys power oversteer when 300 or more pounds/feet of torque is available from 1000 rpm to 6000 rpm! Otherwise, familiar Corvette behavior carries on: nearly instantaneous turn-in, great predictability, slight understeer at the limit, outstanding wheel control and excellent ride steer management under acceleration and deceleration or on rough roads. Then, of course, there are the brakes, heavy duty, ABS binders that, when applied, feel like the Battleship New Jersey's anchor was just tossed overboard.

After doing the Crest and Glendora we examined the King’s "Fish Out of Water" or FOW (pronounced "foh" as in "one, two, three, foh") factor. This totally stupid phrase labels how we gauge a performance car's ability to handle tasks that are mundane and seemingly out of character.

First, we subjected the ZR1 to 40 minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic on L.A.’s clogged freeways at rush hour. We picked a perfect day! It was one of those very hot, real smoggy and just plain nasty late summer afternoons for which the Los Angeles basin is infamous. The radio said it was 105°. But, while averaging less than 5 mph in a seemingly endless sea of cars and trucks all making their contribution to temperature and air quality; it had to be one-twelve.

You can forget all that B.S. about overheating. Maybe that was a problem early in the King's growth but the Corvette Group did their jobs. They devised a cooling system that keeps the ZR1 cool under any driving situation. The biggest number we saw in traffic was 230°F, apparently the King's "fan-on" temperature. When pushed hard on the Crest, the LT5 never got over 215°F.

Next, to see if ZR1 lives up to its billing as a "bi-modal" car, that is, be capable of astounding performance as well as excellent drivability, we threw in a little "around town" cruising.

You see, car magazine writers actually have real lives. Yes, we too, must deal with boring chores. I spent a day using the King to meet my needs in this area. I went to the grocery store, drove to a dentist appointment, took the cat to the veterinarian (in a ZR1?! I gotta be kidding, right?) and hauled my buns over to Fed Ex to send copy overnight to our most excellent Editor. All of this was an acid test of the highest performance automobile ever mass produced anywhere. One if the four original objectives of the King-of-the-Hill concept was to "Achieve that kind of performance without sacrificing drivability--not only at the high end where you expect fast cars to drive well, but at the low end, too." The ZR1 apparently meets that goal quite well.

It makes a pretty fine (but real expensive!) grocery getter. It's just as docile as any L98. It starts easy, even after hot soaks. It idles smoothly at 650 rpm. It's six speed transmission is one of the sweetest shifting gear boxes ever, better than even the M21 in my '71 Coupe. The a/c and the Delco/Bose made my day even more delightful. Of course, then there's all the people who look at the car. I just knew they were all saying, "That dude is majorly cool cause he's driving a King!".

While we are talking drivability, let's look at another of the four objectives: "Package all this leading-edge performance and drivability into an engine that could still deliver great fuel economy." Over the 567 miles we drove, ZR1 averaged 19.1 miles per gallon. Pretty damn good for a car that can cruise all day at 150 as well as schlep the copy over to Fed Ex!

Believe or not, one thing we automotive journalists have (besides real lives and cats that get sick) is occasional lack of objectivity. Ha! Thought you'd never see such honesty! Actually, we thought the ZR1 was so good that, perhaps, we were getting carried away by the whole experience. So, we got some outside opinions by letting a few select Corvette enthusiasts drive the car.

We took the car to a couple of Corvette clubs in the L.A. area as we wanted to let some club people see the King up close and personal then get their impressions. We made meetings of Corvettes Limited of Los Angeles and the Pomona Valley Corvette Association. To generate interest in our ZR1 "introduction," at each meeting, we auctioned off one supervised, 10-minute drive in the car and donated the money to each club's treasury. As a result, we drew almost 100 people over the two meetings. PVCA got the "affluence award" as one of their members paid $55 for his 10-minute "test". We spent the first five of that cruising on surface streets. Once we were sure each person who won was not some kind of deranged car abuser (obviously we did not let any of the guys from Car&Driver in on this gig!) we turned on the power key and headed for the freeway. Our two drivers were instructed that the rev limit was 6000 and they were not to exceed 65 mph. In spite of the restrictions, both had fun!

Amazingly, the first feedback our two samples each had was that they were absolutely astounded with the car's polite behavior. Each had expected a brute of a car, perhaps like a 427 Tri-Power or an L88. One went as far to express doubt of the car's actual potential. Of course, we rose to the challenge. We switched spots and gave this person "some religion" in the form of a brief taste of the King's true talents.

We hit 7100 in first and second gears. "I believe, I believe," was the response. Corvette engineer, Jim Ingle, (known to be the fastest Corvette driver there is and who loves to take disbelieving ZR1 passengers on similar "missions to God,") would have been proud of us!

We have to take a few lines and talk about the King's LT5 four-cam, all-aluminum, 5.7L V8. Designed by Group Lotus (now a GM subsidiary), supervised and tested by CPC and manufactured by Mercury Marine; this engine is an outstanding powerplant. It never missed a beat during our test. It put up with 10 top speed passes, the Crest and Glendora, heavy traffic and kitty cruising duties, all that while getting 19 mpg! And, the sound, what a neat noise! Most of it comes from the induction system. From 4000-7000, it's awesome! combine that with what you feel as the car accelerates and King-block is a genuine rush! All involved with the LT5 development program and its entry into production, particularly the folks who hand assemble each unit at Mercury’s plant in Stillwater, Oklahoma, are to be complimented on bringing in an excellent engine.

Remember the part about "better than bad sex."? That thought was influenced by the ZR1's acceleration and speed. Once we were through tearing up the twisties, doing our shopping and making points with the clubs; we took the King way out in the desert, pointed it down a long two-lane road and put our foot down. The test location was "Mrs. Orcutt's Driveway", a four-mile, abandoned two-lane strip of blacktop in California's San Bernardino County.

First we set up our Vericom VC200 Performance Computer and banged off five 1/4 mile runs. Throwing out the best and worst then averaging the middle three gave us 13.21/105.2. Not bad for a hot summer day, half a tank of gas, a bit of a crosswind and the altitude of the high desert.

Then, we broke out the radar gun. Much has been said of the King's 180 mph top speed. We believe that figure approximates the ZR1's terminal velocity. With access to a test track having flat straights at least a mile long and banked turns; the car would easily do it. However, superspeedway ovals were in short supply during our test, so we settled for the two-lane, real world venue provided by the late Mrs. Orcutt. We had one rule and that was we'd use the first 3.5 miles to accelerate and save the last 1/2 to slow down. Okay, enough chit chat. You want to know...

How fast?

This writer was doing 165 on his first pass when the car got a bit titchy, a bumpy road and the 10-15 mph cross wind took their toll. My "wimp light" came on and I backed out of the throttle at the 2.7-mile mark. I made a couple of more passes at 159 and 164. Then I turned the King over to 1988 Corvette Challenge Champion, Stu Hayner, who joined us for this effort. He promptly, used the full three and a half and ran 172, and the car was still accelerating when he backed out of it. See, that's why he's a race driver and I write magazine articles.

Think of it! An American car you and I can buy at a Chevrolet dealer that can be pointed down most any deserted, straight road and, given a long enough stretch, can go at least 172 miles an hour.

Yes, the ZR1 indeed is "...Corvette...only more so!"

And now, the truth.

The car we drove for this impression was not a production 1990 ZR1.

The first of those were built at Bowling Green on Wednesday, August 30, 1989, six days prior to our test. To clarify further, as this will undoubtedly be a source of controversy in future years, the first 18 ZR-1s were "engineering units" that went back to Chevrolet for testing, verification and other purposes. CART Indy Car racer Rick Mears was given the last of these 18 engineering units. Mears' ZR1 had a special Penzoil yellow paint job in honor of his major sponsor. The first ZR1 for sale to the public as a new car and the 19th car built went to Chevrolet mega-dealer and NASCAR Winston Cup team owner, Rick Hendrick.

But, what about our test car? It was one of the very late pilot line cars built in 1989. Late pilot cars are kind of a bridge between prototype and production. They are built on an assembly line (prototypes are done by hand), are virtually "production" as far as technical specifications and performance figures. Where they may differ is in quality control (one reason for pilot cars is to find bugs in the assembly processes) and in the sources of some parts (for example, a pilot car might have a certain part from "Company A" where as the production source might be "Company B"). Our test car was stamped with VIN 1G1YZ21J3K5800074. According to Corvette Development Manager, John Heinricy, it was built after the ZR1 press introduction in France and is virtually identical to '90 production except it lacked the restyled interior.

The car was nearly flawless in its execution. Fit and finish were excellent. The only quality problems were a power antenna that wouldn’t come up and a six-speed that made a bit more noise than we liked. As the car had 5096 total miles on it, the trans. problem was probably due to prior abuse.

While running the LT5 in the high rpm ranges, if we had the windows down, we'd smell oil. A look at the motor saw oil on the right exhaust manifold/catalytic converter assembly. As it turned out, this wasn't an engine problem, but a poor maintenance problem. Jim Ingle told us that with LT5, the last 25% of oil drain back after shut-down can be slow. If level is checked too soon, the reading will be erroneous. He suggested checking oil in the morning before fire-up or waiting 15-minutes after use. Sure enough, checked in that manner, we found the engine 3/4s of a quart over full. We siphoned off the surplus and the oil on the exhaust disappeared.

Once we actually get a '90 ZR1, we'll do this gig again but, you can bet that the performance and feel will be the same as our 72 hours with good old #74!