2008 Chevrolet Corvette

It's called the law of diminishing returns: the idea that, after you pass a certain threshold, your investment no longer corresponds to your reward. It also applies to sports cars. There's a kink in the price/performance graph where you begin spending a lot more money for not much more performance. There's an easily definable point after which come diminishing returns, and that point is the Chevy Corvette.

At this point, Chevy could probably say, "Here's a car that goes 190 miles per hour and costs forty-six grand. You don't like the steering? Bite me." Instead, it rolled out a car that does 190 mph while also addressing the subjective aspects of the driving experience. The steering got a new machining process for its internal components, in the name of improved feel. The shifter was revised, in search of more direct throws. The interior, long a Corvette weak point, got a new option that can be best surmised as "cover everything in leather." The 2008 Corvette is like a prodigal athlete who's not content to merely destroy the competition - now he wants to do it with style.

It's not like there's a car waiting in the wings to usurp the Corvette's title of Supreme Sports Car Bang for the Buck, but Chevy acts as if there is. And that's why the Corvette is, once again, an unequivocal All-Star.

2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z06

Corvettes, God love 'em, have always been as American as Mom, apple pie, and the 32-ounce Big Gulp that Mom drinks to wash her pie down. Yet while these sporting Chevrolets have long amused speed-obsessed Europeans as prime icons of Yankee muscle and style, they've never really been at home in Europe, a land of puny roads, micro-machines, and fermented grape beverages served in small glasses. To European tastes, the heavy Chevys were not unlike that Big Gulp: too big, too plastic, too sugary and sloppy.

Being 4.7 inches shorter than its predecessor, the new C6 Corvette is within an inch of a Porsche 911, and Chevrolet thinks that means there might be some new business to be done in the Old World. Chevy believes that being just that useful little bit more compact and even faster than the C5, the C6 now presents a performance bargain so undeniable that even the Continent's cheese-eating surrender monkeys will be forced to show respect.

You may remember how we liked the Z06 of 2001 so much that we awarded it Automobile Magazine's coveted Automobile of the Year title. What could be better, we asked at the time, than a tricked-out version of the then radically new C5 Vette hardtop with 385 hp, straight from the factory?

The answer came in the form of the C6 Corvette, an evolutionary development of the C5 that would arrive four years later with an even steamier 400-hp, 400-lb-ft rendition of the classic Chevrolet small-block. That the Chevy small-block remains a huge player in America's arsenal of high-performance internal combustion is as remarkable as it is inarguable, what with the engine celebrating its fiftieth production anniversary this year. But longevity is no mystery when you consider the LS2-the direct descendant of Chevy engineer (later GM president) Ed Cole's 265-cubic-inch pushrod V-8 of 1955-in action. Always tractable, devastatingly fast, stone reliable. What could be better than that?

How does 0 to 60 mph in 4.1 seconds sound? A 12.0-second quarter-mile at 124 mph?
Top speed of 198 mph? Redline at 7000 rpm? Not a shabby statistic in the bunch, especially for those of us old enough to remember the 1975 model year and Corvettes that reluctantly scaled the peaks of feebledom just long enough to deliver their pitiable maximum allotment of 165 hp at 3800 rpm. To those who would question the forward direction of man's technological progress, we point to the Z06 and rest our case. To those who would argue that pushrod, two-valve technology won't a sports car make, it is time to re-check the facts.

Actual top speed in the manufacturing validation examples of the Z06s we drove was not 198 mph but rather an electronically limited 191 mph, it pained us to learn. But as it turned out, we never had a chance to see the wild side of 160 mph, anyway. Out on the track, we were busy trying to learn the racer's line through strange corners. So consumed, we braked late, we braked early, and we generally clung to the inept journalist's line (also known as the loser's line) through the twisties, instead of worrying about going as fast as humanly possible down the straights. If we had been smarter, which is to say stupider, this would have been our chance.

The Z06 is not without fault. Interior plastics have come a long way but still have several thousand miles to go. The combination of a cavernous cargo space behind the seats with nineteen-inch Goodyear run-flats almost a foot wide is always going to be sonically punishing in a plastic car. Tire noise is seriously for keeps. Then there is the Z06's Tremec six-speed manual transmission. Its heavy innards are placed just ahead of the rear axle for better weight distribution. It is clearly a more pleasant unit than Corvette gearboxes of the past, boasting shorter throws than C4s and C5s and a less obtrusive first-to-fourth econo-shift. It remains, however, despite the action of a lighter clutch, very much the manly shifting device. Not so much a joy to use but torture no more.

The driveline now emerges as the key irritant, making a nasty noise whenever the LS7 is being lugged. The engine itself is completely amenable to low rpm. But try them, and then up comes the sound of a UFO, an unidentified frying object, a.k.a. drive-line "sizzle." It's reminiscent of the sound of the worn rock-crusher transmissions that are found in old muscle cars and heavy-duty trucks. The Corvette engineers knew what we were talking about when we mentioned it, and they told us that it afflicts only Z06 manual transmissions. They said they were working on it.

Still, you don't have to hit the Rhine wine to see that the Z06-and the standard Corvette with its new six-speed automatic-could do some business in Europe. It's not just Americana, it's an amazing performance achievement.