This was bound to happen. In a car that’s capable of accelerating so hard it leaves you with an instant windborne facial realignment, resistance is futile. Futility, as I soon discovered, came with a 130 dollar price tag. 


But let me start right at the top. You see, I have never been a big fan of the Corvette. Nor did I ever think it would occupy space in my million-dollar fantasy garage. To me, the Corvette has always been fighting a bit of a confidence crisis. Maybe because it didn’t go down too well the first time around or maybe because it has the lineage of an American trailer park family. Fifty years later, I think it’s still battling perception.

Besides, it isn’t exactly flush with Space Shuttle bits either. Where is the carbon fibre or the mollycoddlenium? Where are the impractical doors? Instead, you get a floor made out of balsa wood and leaf-spring suspension. The last time I checked, that was standard equipment on a bullock cart. Nor were any of the Corvettes I know of designed by people with unpronounceable names like Giugiaro or Donckerwolke. I mean Bill or Ed are names you would expect to read on the shirts of guys who serve you burgers at McDonald’s. The Corvette even commits the ultimate supercar sin of being cheap. You could buy a ‘Vette for the same kind of money that you would pay for the first service for something wearing a prancing horse. It’s unbelievable, isn’t it? Half a century later, America’s only supercar is still knocking on the doors of the exotic car club.

However, perception be damned. The all new Chevrolet Corvette – the C6 – is bigger, badder and indeed madder than ever before. And the Z06 that we’ve driven here is the King Kong version. One that General Motors hopes will blow the doors off the supercar club. GM’s philosophy is pretty simple. With a motor that’s powerful enough to get the earth rotating if it were ever to stop spinning,they believe that if you have people by their family jewels, their hearts and minds will automatically follow. Reality, it seems, is catching up with perception.   

The magic words are 500 bhp. 500 bhp was what it took to get me out of the navigator’s seat of our Raid de Himalaya Swift and into seat 26A of a Detroit-bound DC-10. 500 bhp made me an insomniac. And 500 rampaging stallions are good enough to drag you down the road with greed that widens your eyes and frankly, whitens your knuckles. Dragged however isn’t the appropriate word. Flung is more like it. Because the sheer force this riot of metal exerts is enough to disturb the planet’s gravitational pull. Not that you would know by just merely looking at the car. 

The C6 is clearly an evolutionary design. Compared to the C5, it’s shorter by five inches and the wheelbase is longer by an inch. Tom Peters is the man responsible for not ticking up-size on the dimensions menu. Apart from that, the more visible changes are to the front end, and as you notice, no door handles. Only touch pads. Once inside, it’s surprisingly roomy. And apart from the dials which look the part, nothing really conveys what lies beneath. There is no brushed aluminium, no body-hugging seats. Nothing that conveys a sense of occasion.