Giant Slayers Unite: 1990 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 Meets 2023 Corvette Z06!

In the 1980s, Chevrolet Corvette engineers received an assignment as ambitious as it was simple: Build the world's best-performing production car. They delivered the 1990 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1, a monstrously powerful and furiously quick car that kept pace with exotic supercars costing tens of thousands of dollars more. Sound familiar? The ZR-1 transformed America's sports car into a world-beating triumph of engineering for the first time—but definitely not the last. The same story has repeated with every subsequent Corvette generation, and the ZR-1 tradition lives on today in the 2023 Corvette Z06.

General Motors bet big on electronics and advanced technology in the 1980s as it looked to put the energy crisis, performance-choking emissions regulations, and Japanese brands in its rearview mirror. Under chairman Roger B. Smith, the company bought Hughes Aircraft for more than $5 billion in 1985, banking on head-up displays, in-car navigation, and radar-based collision avoidance systems to revolutionize future models. The original Corvette ZR-1 represented a different tactic of the same strategy. Building the world's quickest, fastest, and best-handling sports car would reassert GM's engineering prowess and the Corvette's credibility.

In the era of joint ventures with Toyota and Suzuki, GM turned to newly acquired Lotus to develop the engine for the "King of the Hill" Corvette. Chevrolet engineers had already experimented with turbocharged engines but settled on a naturally aspirated V-8, so the work at Lotus focused on moving air, fuel, and exhaust through the heads. By doubling the number of valves and quadrupling the number of camshafts, making the targeted 400 horsepower came easy. The challenge lay in designing an engine that could produce big power while also remaining flexible enough to be civilized at low rpm and low loads. Initially, the air moved through the intake tract so slowly at part throttle that the 5.7-liter V-8 frequently hesitated and stumbled.

Lotus inflated the torque curve and smoothed out the power delivery by shutting down half of the engine's 16 intake runners and 16 fuel injectors until they were needed. At full throttle and above 3,500 rpm, butterfly valves blocking the secondary intake runners open to deliver additional air and fuel through intake valves that are held open higher and longer than the primary ones.

With the secondaries uncorked, the 5.7-liter 32-valve, four-cam LT5 V-8 spits out 375 hp at 5,800 rpm and 370 lb-ft at 4,800 rpm. The only cars making more power had names like Countach, Testarossa, 959, and F40. The ZR-1 hit 60 mph in 4.4 seconds and punched through the quarter mile in 12.8 seconds at 113.8 mph in MotorTrend testing. It stopped from 60 mph in 109 feet and cornered steadily at 0.90 g in that evaluation. (Subsequent ZR-1s would achieve as high as 0.99 g skidpad grip.) Those figures were so wild at the time that they still hold up today. Thirty-three years on, the ZR-1 accelerates, brakes, and corners as hard as a 2023 Nissan Z.

The engine's character holds up, too. The LT5 makes more than 300 lb-ft of torque between 1,000 and 5,000 rpm, and anywhere from idle to 7,000 rpm it responds instantly to throttle inputs with an even, linear pull that's missing from modern turbocharged performance cars. You could put this engine in a new car today and have everything you want, save for the fuel economy we take for granted.

Chevy at the time managed to meet emissions standards and steer clear of the gas-guzzler tax with some sly features. Accessing all of the power required inserting a "valet" key into the base of the center stack and turning it to FULL, which lit a FULL ENGINE POWER telltale on the dashboard. Without it, you were locked out of the secondary intake runners and limited to the Normal mode's roughly 210 hp. In either mode, GM's skip-shift feature would interrupt leisurely cruising by forcing the driver from first gear directly into fourth at speeds as slow as an engine-lugging 12 mph.

The ZR-1 was, of course, more than its engine. It was a technological tour de force, a fact we recognized with a David Kimble cutaway illustration of the car on our October 1988 cover. It rode on Bilstein adaptive dampers with driver-selectable Tour, Sport, and Performance modes, and the fenders were gracefully—almost imperceptibly—stretched 3 inches to accommodate the massive 315/35R17 Goodyear Eagle ZR rear tires. In its best skidpad test, the ZR-1 put up an awesome 0.98 g, prompting us to write, "The car grips like a pit bull on a mailman."

While the LT5 had the 4.4-inch bore spacing necessary to be called a Chevy small-block, it was an entirely different engine than the L98 that powered early C4 Corvette coupes and convertibles. The ZR-1 used an aluminum block rather than an iron lump; both engines' displacement rounded to 5.7 liters, but the LT5 had a smaller bore, longer stroke, and higher compression ratio of 11.3:1, up from 9.5:1.

It's a similar story with the LT6 engine in today's Z06. Compared to the 495-hp 6.2-liter LT2 V-8 that powers the modern Corvette Stingray, the Z06's 670-hp 5.5-liter LT6 V-8 is so different it might as well be a nuclear reactor. The Z06's LT6 follows in the footsteps of the ZR-1's LT5 as only the second Corvette with 32 valves and dual overhead camshafts, but that's where the similarities begin and end for these two engines. The thread tying them together has virtually nothing to do with architectural similarities. They instead arrive on common ground because Z06 and ZR-1 engines are so different—in design, performance, and character—when compared to the small-block V-8s offered in the standard Corvette of the era.

In the Z06, a flat-plane crankshaft unlocks an 8,600-rpm redline that ostensibly turns Chevy's sports car into a race car. Thumb the push-button ignition, and the Z06 rips to life, revving the engine with a contagious sense of urgency. This engine spins so quickly and sounds so righteous that it begs to be driven at full throttle whenever you're not braking or turning. Along with a pile of go-fast chassis tech, the LT6 makes the Corvette more track-focused than ever. The Z06 slings rocks at the Porsche 911 GT3, the McLaren 765LT, and the Ferrari F8 Pista, and it lands at least as many as it misses.

The performance is epic, too. In MotorTrend testing, the Z06 lays down a 2.6-second 0-60 time and shoots through the quarter mile in 10.6 seconds at 131.6 mph. It hauls itself to a stop in as little as 95 feet and circles the skidpad with as much as 1.16 g's of grip. Like the ZR-1 before it, the Z06 hits just as hard as many exotics you could reasonably compare against it, all at a fraction of the price.

About the only thing the 1990 Corvette ZR-1 couldn't outrun when it was new was GM's penchant for shoddy interiors. All Corvettes got a new driver-oriented dash for 1990 that was a significant upgrade over the prior year's shapeless, dated design. A switch from an all-digital instrument cluster to a digital speedometer flanked by analog gauges modernized the cabin, but the cheap materials and lousy panel fits hardly improved. You might as well be sitting on the Michelin Man's lap, but at least the seats are as comfortable as they are grotesque.

Despite its prodigious performance, the ZR-1 struggled to capture the public's imagination and buyers' wallets as GM had hoped. The interior was certainly part of the problem. The ZR-1 nearly doubled the price of the Corvette coupe to $58,995, or $139,000 in today's dollars. We justified the price in an April 1990 feature on the Corvette lineup, writing, "This one isn't likely to depreciate much in our lifetimes." Boy, were we wrong. The ZR-1 never became a cultural icon, and outside of the Corvette faithful, collectors continue to largely ignore it. Still widely underappreciated, the best ZR-1s sell for the same amount today as they did new. Factor in inflation, and the price has dropped nearly 60 percent since they left the factory.

In struggling to earn the recognition it deserved, the ZR-1 cemented another aspect of the Corvette's identity that persists to this day. No matter how capable or magnificent to drive they are, Corvettes always fight to receive the same reverence as Porsches and Ferraris. That was true for the ZR-1, and it's true for the Z06. No matter how many times the giants are undercut and outperformed, or at least matched, the Corvette must prove itself with every new version.

To give it a fighting chance, GM finally outfitted the eighth-generation Corvette with an appropriately upscale interior. The 3LZ trim's leather-wrapped cabin showcases quality you can see and feel. There's none of the ZR-1's flagrant cheapness to be found, though if  you squint, the ramp of buttons rising from the center console to the top of the dash imitates the driver-centric design from the 1990 model. With the engine off, you'd be forgiven for mistaking this Z06 for a luxurious grand tourer rather than a purist's track toy.

This one car shows the breadth of what a Corvette can be. You'll soon see the idea of a Corvette with multiple personalities teased even further. Taking a page from Porsche's playbook, Chevy is expanding the model line to cover a broader range of price, performance, and purpose so its most iconic model can be more things to more people. Today, a Z06 is the top dog. In the future, it'll be just one variant in a full quiver of specialty models.

In some ways, the fact the Corvette Z06 isn't the ultimate eighth-generation Corvette makes it an imperfect analogue to the ZR-1. Later this year, the Corvette will roll into the electrified future with the 655-hp, all-wheel-drive  E-Ray hybrid. That car's basic formula—a motor up front and a gas engine in the rear—will push the Corvette toward four-digit horsepower with a model likely named Zora or ZR1.

Whatever comes next and whatever it's called, you can bet that the people behind it are developing the car with the ZR-1's legacy in mind: The car photographed for this story is owned by Josh Holder, Corvette chief engineer.