The Corvette Z06 and I go way back. A 2002 Z06 was the first test car I ever wrote about, back when having 405 horsepower warranted carrying a badge that read “405 HP.” Those early cars were voted “Most Likely to Have Their Titanium Mufflers Replaced With Glasspacks Because The Owner Thinks ‘Titanium’ Is That Thing Where You Have A Ringing In Your Ears.” The C5 Z06 was powerful, always entertaining, and just a little bit cheesy: the Hulk Hogan of cars.
A few years later, I got the first crack at the new and way-overhauled C6 Z06, a scary car to drive at the limit. I brought it to the infield road course at Charlotte Motor Speedway, where I challenged Dale Earnhardt Jr. to a duel. The equalizer: I’d have the Z06, while he’d drive a Chevy Cobalt SS. My editors were not confident that this was a great challenge—they thought Junior would cream me anyway. But as it turns out, 300 extra horsepower was more than enough compensation for my talent deficiency. I’ll bet I could do all right in the United States Pro Kart Series, too, as long as I got to drive an Audi R18.
Over the years came more Z06 experiences: scything through Ohio cornfields in a cammed-up Lingenfelter Z06, which at idle felt like sitting inside an unbalanced washing machine. Christmas of ’06, I brought my tree home on the roof of a silver Z06. And about five years ago, I took my mailman on his route in a Corvette. That was a ZR1, though. It got 3 mpg, which is one reason that the U.S. Postal Service generally refrains from using supercharged Corvettes.
The 2015 Z06 hadn’t been out long when I got ahold of one and started brainstorming the next chapter in my book of Dumb Z06 Activities. I had a notion to take it to a drag strip, but that seemed too obvious. So I entered it in a Porsche Club of America autocross. The local PCA has a good sense of humor about me showing up at their events in non-Porsches, which is pretty much always the case.
On the appointed Sunday, I arrived at the employee lot of a defunct carpet factory. The original venue, a community college with a freshly paved lot, apparently got cold feet at the 11th hour and bailed, leaving a fleet of flat-six enthusiasts with nowhere to get their competition fix. Here, the desiccated pavement was crazed with cracks, but the real wild card was the speed bump, an unavoidable yellow lump that you’d have to hit twice per lap. The guy who brought a Macan Turbo was psyched. He wouldn’t have to slow down.
The Z06 that I brought, a convertible, wasn’t equipped with the chin-scraping aero package, but it was still far from the ideal ride for this scenario. With 650 horsepower, I had about 550 horsepower more than I could use. I even screwed up choosing my car’s competition number. I asked for 33, Larry Bird’s jersey, and the woman at the sign-up table said: “That number’s available. Probably because it’s hard to make threes out of masking tape.” She was right. I spent the next 15 minutes tediously applying my chosen numbers to the doors. It wouldn’t be the last time that I was slow.
Of this very car, Don Sherman wrote, “The Z06’s front tires trip over themselves in tight turning maneuvers, a fault attributable to steering geometry that is optimized for limit-cornering performance.” Tight turning maneuvers? This whole place was a tight turning maneuver. Dan Neil from the Wall Street Journal brought a 2016 Mazda Miata, an entirely more sensible choice when your track is made of orange cones and includes an Employee of the Month spot. Autocrossing a Z06 is like having a nuclear war in your living room.
Nonetheless, I gave it my best shot. I pulled to the line and set off through the slalom, the Z06’s Nicki Minaj haunches barely fitting between the cones. Then, the speed bump. I braked, eased over the hump, and hammered down once the rear tires were clear. Somehow, I don’t think they planned for this particular situation during development at Milford. Compression, rebound, compression, rebound: Hooking up on the far side of the hump, the silver Vette very nearly pulled a wheelie. Which is not the ideal setup for, you know, turning. I hammed it around the course for a time of 41.7 seconds, laying strips of rubber across the finish line. I never got out of first gear.
The Miata, by comparison, looked like a steeplechase horse bounding gracefully across the course. I saw no brake lights at the speed bump, but neither was there any crunch of impact on the far side. The Mazda slewed over like a yawl in the horseshoe corner, settling into a four-wheel drift at approximately 12 mph. It looked good. It looked like fun. Neil’s time: 41.7.
Perhaps there’s some moral here about overkill, about the virtues of nuance, but the Z06 and I don’t know what it is. The 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 is more polished than it’s ever been, but Terry Bollea in a pair of Dockers is still the Hulkster. Now let’s see if we can pull a wheelie, brother.
Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.
