If there’s one thing that’s basically certain when it comes to cars, it’s that acceleration improves with each generation of performance cars, to the point where eventually, the record-setters of yesteryear will be eclipsed by more attainable machinery. However, every so often, something sets such a high bar that trickle-down seems almost impossible. For years, we’ve wondered when more affordable two-seaters will catch up to the ridiculous bar set by the Bugatti Veyron. Well, it’s right about now, thanks to the utterly bonkers 1,064-horsepower C8 Corvette ZR1.
When equipped with the ZTK performance package, Chevrolet claims the new ZR1 can rip off a ludicrous 2.3 second zero-to-60 mph time. For context, when Car And Driver tested a Bugatti Veyron back in 2008, the magazine managed a 2.5-second zero-to-60 mph run from Ferdinand Piech’s million-dollar masterpiece. In the modern context, the new ZR1 is just as quick as a Lamborghini Revuelto, an Aston Martin Valkyrie, and a Ferrari 296 GTB. That’s some serious pace off the mark,
Extending things to the quarter-mile, Chevrolet claims the Corvette ZR1 can run a 9.6 second pass with a trap speed of 150 mph on an unprepared surface — no sticky drag strip glue to juice grip on the launch. That’s half a second quicker than Car And Driver’s 10.1 second quarter-mile run in the 2008 Veyron, and the Bugatti had a trap speed eight miles per hour lower than that of the latest top-dog Vette. That’s also right on pace with a Ferrari 296 GTB, quicker than a Porsche 918 Spyder, and quicker than a McLaren P1. Yeah, the hypercars of just one generation ago can be outrun by a bone-stock Corvette. What a time to be alive.
Of course, raw times only tell half the story. Compared to a Veyron, the Corvette ZR1 is only rear-wheel-drive versus all-wheel-drive, but it also runs on substantially more modern tires. Tech-wise, the Michelin PAX run-flats from the Veyron are ancient compared to the sticky Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires optional on the new ZR1, and this basically 20-year delta in tire technology no doubt helps make up for the deficit in driven wheels. Then there’s curb weight — the Veyron is a Goliath, clocking in 4,486 pounds. While Chevrolet has only provided dry weights for the ZR1, expect it to tip the scales a few hundred pounds lighter than the Veyron.
Then there’s output and gearing. The ZR1 makes slightly more power than the Veyron and does so at 7,000 rpm versus 6,000 rpm, but it also makes 94 fewer lb.-ft. of torque. At the same time, we do know that the ZR1 features an eight-speed DCT to the Veyron’s seven-speed unit, but without knowing the ratios and final drive, it’s hard to say which car has a gearing advantage.
Still, add it all up, and it’s astonishing that 20 years after the Bugatti Veyron claimed the title for the fastest production car in the world, you can buy a stock Corvette that’ll out-accelerate it through the quarter-mile and come within 20 mph of the Veyron’s absurd 253 mph top speed. Progress is a beautiful thing, and it’s now crystal clear that the 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 is America’s hypercar.
(Photo credits: Chevrolet)
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That thing looks amazing too. I love Corvettes.
And invariably someone will complain about the interior.
Looking forward to the day when the Government limits HP to 300, top speed is limited to 85mph & 0-60 is maxed at 9 seconds at the lowest.
Why?
Two things: safety concerns and fuel consumption, although it would be probably fairer to say CO2 emission.
If I am not wrong, Volvo intended or already implemented a top speed limit of 112 MPH (180 KM/H), and on road use, no one needs more than that, tbh.
Maybe they will limit higher power outputs and speed/acceleration limits to track only/off-road cars or special license.
Speed and power are far from being the only things to be considered when trying to the number of traffic related deaths, probably DUI or fatigue should be more important, but I believe it will be impossible to avoid the day where goverments around the world will try some kind of control or limitation to power output or speed/accel as policy to try to reduce traffic related deaths.
It won’t work because that alone will not be able to solve the human natural tendency to be stupid even with boundaries set to avoid that.
I’m just gonna guess that this is a joke and you can’t be serious…since if you are, you have never heard of freedom, don’t know how to have fun, and are an idiot loser w/ no life
When you say bone stock, I know technically yes that’s correct. But it doesn’t seem right considering what this stock Vette is. Anywho, really doesn’t ruffle my feathers at all.
And we’re still awaiting the Zora, right?
Yes. That will inevitably add the E Ray’s electric motor and battery.
Remember also, the Bug had 4 turbos and 16 cylinders vs. just 2 snails and 2 driven wheels on the ZR1.
Just imagine how the rumored Zora (AWD mid 5.5 TT V8, electric motor and battery pack) would further eclipse a Veyron…..might even give the Chiron a run for its money.
‘Bone stock Corvette’ is a bit of a stretch; especially at a reported $200k.
It’s technically correct, no aftermarket add-ons = stock
Ehh… like Mustang GTD is a ‘Ford’…
Multimatic builds the GTD in Canada.
Chevy/GM build the ZR1 in Kentucky.
Do you see the difference?
History tells me it won’t make rated power unless it’s a special one. So Bob from Ohio will enjoy it lacking several hundred hp as the cooling can’t keep up.
I’m hoping we can all get around to realizing that these numbers are essentially meaningless nowadays and come up with some kind of metric to assess driving qualities that matter, like engagement and tactility and the general feeling of being special. I have no idea how to quantify that, but those are the qualities that matter to me and I think many of us could agree that these traditional numbers have gotten to the point of being irrelevant in real world use and are only small academic differences for comparison’ sake. It reminds me about how I was thinking recently about power:weight. While, sure, that’s better than just a hp number for telling a story, there’s a huge difference between a 5k lbs car with 700hp and a 2k lbs car with 280hp and I know which I’d rather drive.
This is essentially what we rely on good auto journalists to do for us, because how fun/engaging/whatever a car is remains a deeply qualitative question. These are the exact qualities that defy quantitative metrics. Try to describe your favorite piece of art with quantitative measurements and you’ll run up against the same problem–these numbers can’t describe experiences, they can only help to contextualize them.
That’s what I wrote that I don’t know how to do it. My main point is that the numbers we’ve been using as base measures for performance have become irrelevant and there might need to be something else that can be used for comparison’s sake with the hope being that manufacturers would respond by no longer chasing even greater unattainable and pointless numbers. Acceleration to 60 in 3.1, 2.9, or 1.9 is pretty much the same, highly subject to change due to varying conditions or driver and limited in situations to deploy, anyway. Maybe a quarter mile time, but how many people buying these kinds of supercars are just looking to use them as dragsters? Nurburgring times? WGAF. So, I buy a performance car with a full-time shitty ride and short maintenance schedules so that some highly experienced professional that 99.99% of us are definitely not can break some previous record by one second and change or hit some dumb top speed that cannot be reached even on most closed courses and requires special tires or other bullshit? Yeah, I thought these numbers were cool when I was 13 and didn’t know better, but they still had some meaning in that a fairly normal person could reach them and even occasionally fully use the available power.
If you look at tire ratings on Tire Rack, they have an overall score that’s an average of multiple, individually rated categories. Maybe that’s something that could be looked at to inspire a template. Things like a “special feel” aren’t quantifiable and that’s what the reviews are for (and even then, I’ve learned that opinions on what a good feeling driver’s car between me and most journalists varies widely with me being far more picky even while having driven far fewer cars), but there might be a way to get closer to rating things a normal driver could appreciate, especially as cars are getting further removed from being enjoyable and they’re handing us worthless performance numbers to placate us instead (often coming with a shitty ride or high maintenance air suspension where reasonable tire sidewalls would probably have been enough). I’ll take an involving, analog, communicative car that does 0-60 in 8-10 seconds but doesn’t feel slow (and could come with much lower maintenance and running costs and maybe an actual overbuilt drivetrain) than an expensive, fragile rocket that never feels fast unless I’m behaving sociopathically on the roadways and probably for only about 3 seconds before I’ve wrapped myself around a tree.
Whaaat??!!!
How will the short-penis guys survive without their lease-poser cars with 500hp+
This may be the only supercar I actually ever see in real life. All the other halo cars, and supercars, I’ll never see any of those. This one, I may actually see.
You can see broke guys with leased super/hyper cars at Cars & Coffee, parked near the Challenger/Mustang phallus boys.
Wonder how much is down to tires, they’ve come a looooong way. Engineering Explained did a video recently quantifying the change over one generation of tire that was really interesting.
Colin Chapman will always be right.
But the Bug and the Vette are different horses for different courses. The Bugatti was meant to be the ultimate grand tourer, not a sports car. I expect HOW it does the business is rather different than how the Corvette does. A lot less drama. Stick your foot in it and go, no particular skill required.
I expect it still takes some actual talent to get those numbers out of the Corvette, even with 20 years of computer and transmission evolution, and the road surface had best be relatively “just so” even with the magic tires. Let’s compare them in the wet and see how it looks. And the Bugatti is about to benefit from modern tires too – Bugatti are allegedly about to release updated wheels for them that can use conventional (relatively speaking) tires.
Hot take: but 0-60 is a completely irrelevant measure of performance for cars with this level of performance. I think this topic gets brought up every few years but there is a class of car where 0-60 doesn’t mean anything.
I 1000% agree with you. It is by far the most useless performance metric there is.
I like the old 0-100-0 spec myself. Weeds out bullshit like Hellcats rather quickly. Better still, put a 90 degree curve in there to really separate the wheat from the chaff. A monster motor will make anything go fast in a straight line for a short time, let’s see it turn and stop. Or cross a continent, for that matter. Though with the Bugatti, perhaps investing in “inflight refueling” might be necessary, LOL.
i’m okay with just measuring acceleration. but these cars should be tested on a 1/2 or even standing mile because of the level of speed they have.
Does it even matter? Once you have the sheer horsepower to well exceed 200mph in top speed (especially given the downforce needed to do that reasonably safely), stupidly fast acceleration is always going to come along for free. Assuming you can get the power to the ground off the line anyway. In this case, I expect that the Corvette loses out from say 0-20, but the next 40mph the significantly lighter weight and more, likely faster changing gears gets it back and then some. But at this level of performance, it’s “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”.
The difference in top speed given basically the same HP tells me the Bugatti has better aero, and allegedly they are easy to drive at 200mph+(!), which I bet the Corvette is not.
I think the old gt40 told us that 200mph Is “easy” but complicated.
Perhaps a better way to put it is that the Bugatti is “comfortable” at 200mph, which the more extreme sports cars certainly are not. The Bugatti is comfortable in general, they are even quite easy to get in and out of.
well the whole point of measurement would be for comparison sake and for science.
100-0 largely useless since 2000. Where abs controls huge brakes at normal speeds. 1990 911 turbo was huge in brakes with tires to match. 1990 abs was made of bad, but quickly improved. 94 my sho liked 130mph better than 30 it was so bad.
1000hp+ has *always* been useless, when you come right down to it.
I 10,000% agree with you.
Every so often someone who doesn’t know what I do with it, will ask me what my Firebird does in the quarter mile. I tell them I don’t know and don’t care to find out, but it does 2:38 at Road America, if you have a reference for that.
So maybe we need an easily accessible U.S. equivalent to ‘Ring times. C&D has been working at that for years with their Lightning Lap.
In any case, for my track car, and for cars of this caliber, 0-60 isn’t nearly as important as is 80-140. But it had better turn and stop well also.
0-50 in the rain. It’s all my suv is good at, but its fun to leave mid 13sec cars like they are parked w a 4.6l 2v. Above 50 is stupid slow even for a suv.
That’s what the quarter mile is for, elapsed time and trap speed both describe performance.
Meh. Not so much. You can get a Civic today that handily outruns both a GTO and a Testarossa.
I’d also argue that the Veyron is two generations old and that the C8 ZR1 is, for all its engineering, still an ugly car I wouldn’t be caught dead in. And at an expected $200,000-ish… hardly seems a good representation of “trickle-down.”
Disagree. It’s busy and overly creased and origami’ed, but I reserve your sentiment for truly awful styling like the Chubbatruck. And maybe the Dodge Caliber …
The Cyberturd isn’t ugly. It’s just *stupid* and so unfit for purpose that it transcends beauty or ugly. They do have a futuristic coolness about them, but they are just so useless at being what they are supposed to be.
I wouldn’t call the Dodge Caliber ugly either. If it wasn’t such a mechanical turd with such a terrible interior it would be just another very anonymous, completely forgetable crossover. They are bad cars, not ugly ones. The Corvette is a very good car that is actually ugly to my eye – it’s just soooo overwrought (second only to the Supra to me). The Italians manage to make the same idea beautiful.
Well… there’s simply “ugly” and then there’s ugly _and_ obnoxious.
But… I think both qualify for… both.
They’re both ugly.
We’re comparing it to cars in the 500k-1 million dollar range, so yes it is trickle down.
Trickling down from a car for the .01% to the 1%. I suppose that’s progress.
Why not? The Veyron was 1M in 08 which is probably like 1.5 today. For a car that costs 1/7 ish to match its performance is an incredible example of the march of progress. I can’t tell you how incredible the Veyron performance was in 08. It’s the same reason that a Civic Type R can beat a Ford GT from 06 on the ring. That’s amazing to me.
Where are these ZR1 numbers coming from? Seen it brought up on a few sites but having trouble finding the source.
From GM themselves. https://youtu.be/iXBzuBjrzJw?si=tuasm1IXb6nY6MNL