This weekend there’s a race happening. A big one, called the 24 Hours of Le Mans. You know what’ll be there? Corvettes. You know what GM’s about to reveal on October 26? Another Corvette!
OK, not just any Corvette — this is the new Z06, the middle-fast version of the Corvette that will probably share some internal organs with the Corvette C8.R that is at Le Mans this weekend. I say “middle fast” because there will presumably be a ZR1 at some point, and those have historically owned the title of fastest ’Vette. But they also tend to arrive later on in the lifecycle, and anyway we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.
You may have happened across some spy shots of a Corvette with lots of wings and an angry jaw ripping around the Nürburgring this past week. It turns out that very car — a Z06 — was on holiday in Germany, before moseying over to France for the big race this weekend to cheer on its family, as we can see in this video. Corvettes are a supportive clan like that. It also took to lapping the Circuit de la Sarthe while the track was free of action, because apparently it gets a kick out of crashing other people’s parties.
In this teaser we get to hear the Z06 sing the unmistakable siren song of a high-revving flat-plane V8 in anger, just like the GT car does. Couple that with the fact this will be the first midengine Z06 and engineers have been caught benchmarking it against the Porsche 911 GT2 RS, and you could say anticipation for this one’s high.
We’ll get to see it devoid of camouflage in about two months’ time. That said, even without a clear, unvarnished view yet, I think I’ve made my mind up about the crinkled rear wing: it looks silly.