The amazingly quick and magnificent 2009 Chevy Corvette — sometimes called the “C6″ in recognition of its six generations of life, so far — still sits atop the American 2-seater sports car landscape. Made of fiberglass — as it always has been — this highest of high-performing sports cars pays direct complement to a time when America was about automotive speed and power.
This newest sixth-generation ‘Vette continues to add to a stellar record of past performance, and Chevy has seen to it that the car’s fan base out there gets exactly what it wants. Delivering on that promise with various engine and suspension combinations, the car has demonstrated increasing sophistication over the years to go with its improvements in horsepower, speed and — surprisingly — fuel economy.
Starting in 2005, when the C6 made its debut, the Corvette has been continually tweaked by program engineers, and the car – fully rigged-out in various iterations when it comes off the line at its Bowling Green, Kentucky plant – is nothing if not technologically innovative and a joy to drive.
The Corvette has always been used as a kind of expensive test bed for new innovations in engine, sound, body and other characteristics, and the things that the engineers have learned from the 2009 Corvette will make their way all the way down the Chevy lineup, eventually arriving at the subcompact, pedestrian driver level.
The Corvette has never been one to hide away its engine performance in plain vanilla wrapped-V8 engines. There’s a 7 liter powerplant that puts the pedal to the metal with 435 horsepower and that’s not even the most powerful of the bunch. Still, the ‘Vette can dance with the big boy supercar exotics anytime it chooses, and at a price far less than those other models.
As an example, the newest beast in the stable is the ZR1, which uses supercharging to pull the 6. 2 liter V8 engine to over 635 horsepower and 205 miles per hour through a high-tech 6-speed transmission. Even with all that, it’s 105, 000 dollar pricetag comes in far below what other cars offering such performance would cost.
The 2009 Chevy Corvette is nothing short of stupendous, no matter the version offered for consideration. Even base models – if one can call anything sporting the Corvette nameplate “base” – deliver a level of performance at a price that’s just as attractive as the fiberglass-bodied dream machine looks to the human eye. At the top, the ZR1 (at just over 105 thousand dollars) seems sure to inspire lust in the hearts of many a Corvette enthusiast.
Andy Zain is the admin of Corvette Forums , a place where fans and owners can get the right information for tuning, customization and general discussions on anything about Chevy Corvette. Get the information you need when you visit Chevy Truck Forum
