Not so long ago the Car and Driver long-term test fleet featured performance greats such as the Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0, the BMW M3, and Cadillac’s Blackwing twins. Naturally, our taste for high-octane performance machines has only grown more insatiable since their departure.
Enter the 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06. Powered by a 670-hp flat-plane-crank 5.5-liter V-8, this is a Corvette gone Super Saiyan. Oh, it’s also the fifth-fastest car we’ve ever run at Lightning Lap. Sadly, we aren’t able to run our usual 40,000-mile long-term test format (as we did on a regular C8, a 2021 Stingray Z51). But we did manage to wrangle an extended loan, and we’ll be producing frequent updates to let you know what life with a Z06 is like. From dropping the kids off at school to grocery store runs and potential track days, we’ll be updating you on every mile for the next month or so.
4300–5304 miles: City Living
Our first road trip in the Z06 saw us travel from Detroit to Chicago for the Riot Fest music festival. And what better car to bring to Riot Fest than the Z06, which is its own miniature riot? Earplugs are not required for this one, thankfully—although Track mode definitely pumps up the volume.
The drive to Chicago wasn’t bad. The magnetorheological dampers and decent tire sidewalls do a good job of keeping the ride from being truly intolerable, but impact harshness remains severe—one particular pothole had us worried that we’d turned one of the front wheels into a square. Noise is ever-present; the targa-style top did a good job sealing out wind noise, but those aggressive Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires made a whole lot of road noise, in addition to tramlining on grooved or wavy pavement.
Stop-and-go traffic is not the Z06’s favorite place to be. Left to its own devices, the transmission can be reluctant to upshift out of first. Shifting for ourselves in Manual offers a bit more comfort bouncing between zero and 25 mph.
Speaking of bouncing—the tall, slab-sided buildings of Chicago provide the perfect acoustic environment for the Z06. The flat-plane-crank V-8 positively shrieks above 3000 rpm, emitting a wail that may feel out of place in a Corvette, but it feels right at home in a supercar.
You know that feeling you get when you can tell somebody’s looking at you from . . . somewhere? That’s every waking minute in the Z06. It’s a long, low, brash wedge with race-car front aero and a wing the size of a dining-room table. It pulls eyes and comments wherever it goes. As you might expect, the dudes are very into it. Here’s a feather for Chevrolet’s cap: One person asked us if the car cost $250,000.
Perhaps the biggest concern is fitting anywhere. The Z06 is wide, and the giant canards at each corner of the front bumper look sharp enough to slice an ankle and vulnerable enough to crumble at the first sight of a curb. There are no front parking sensors, merely front cameras activated with a button on the center console. It makes parking a slow and steady job, but one that can be done without much frustration. Parallel parking isn’t as bad since there are sensors at the back.
Visibility is also a point of contention. There simply isn’t any in the blind-spot region, requiring us to rely heavily on the blind-spot monitoring system, in addition to the occasional head out the window. Not that there’s a risk of accidentally changing lanes into someone; between the noise and the visual theater, people show deference to the Z06 and give it a wide berth wherever it goes. Perhaps all the bad Corvette drivers of yore have secretly benefitted those of us merely trying to weave around double-bunched buses and arbitrarily placed construction horses. Would the Z06 have been our first pick for a trip to the city? Absolutely not. But now that we’re here, we wouldn’t have chosen any other car. Except maybe that McLaren Senna we saw on Michigan Avenue. —Andrew Krok
Editor-in-Chief
Tony Quiroga is an 18-year-veteran Car and Driver editor, writer, and car reviewer and the 19th editor-in-chief for the magazine since its founding in 1955. He has subscribed to Car and Driver since age six. “Growing up, I read every issue of Car and Driver cover to cover, sometimes three or more times. It’s the place I wanted to work since I could read,” Quiroga says. He moved from Automobile Magazine to an associate editor position at Car and Driver in 2004. Over the years, he has held nearly every editorial position in print and digital, edited several special issues, and also helped produce C/D’s early YouTube efforts. He is also the longest-tenured test driver for Lightning Lap, having lapped Virginia International Raceway’s Grand Course more than 2000 times over 12 years.
