Spy Shots: Corvette SS / Z06 R / Z07 / Stingray caught!

It's not the age that has me generalizing. It's the fact that I have to hold back a tear as I see these things crawling around when they should be sprinting.

Some definitely do get into the right hands, but the majority of the buyers think of a cruise night as a performance driving event.

-Justin
 
^ You're from Massachusetts? Whereabouts, if I may be curious?

For the most part, these cars are not purchased by racers or even performance drivers. Most Corvettes I see on the road seem to be driven by men with white hair and thick glasses in their 60's who drive the cars very slowly on the interstate highways on weekend afternoons. There may be a buyer here and there who is a performance freak who couldn't pass on the value a corvette provides, but for the most part they're selling mid-life crisis machines to people who grew up with big grumbling V8s and associate that with horsepower.
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Don't knock the Corvette for having lame owners; most sports cars from any company are bought by posers. How many yuppies drive Porsches?
 
BlaRo said:
Don't knock the Corvette for having lame owners; most sports cars from any company are bought by posers. How many yuppies drive Porsches?
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^^ Or Ferraris for that matter. The sad truth is most of these cars are bought for as status symbols, nothing more. The majority of these fine automobiles will never know what's like to rev above 2500rpm. They will never see a track or ride a perfectly executed apex at proper speeds. Shame really...
 
watisdis said:
^^ Or Ferraris for that matter. The sad truth is most of these cars are bought for as status symbols, nothing more. The majority of these fine automobiles will never know what's like to rev above 2500rpm. They will never see a track or ride a perfectly executed apex at proper speeds. Shame really...
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It's a shame, but it also explains somewhat why Chevy has stuck with the pushrod V8 - it's what their buyers want. Also, the results they've achieved with pushrods are nothing to disregard. Peak hp numbers are not nearly as important as the area under the torque curve, and these engines generally remain very near to their peak torque output through most of the rev range.

Oh, and I'm in Salem, MA.

-Justin
 
Sweet, I'm from Shrewsbury, at school in Syracuse though. Been to Salem a few times (mostly around Halloween, though, it's the typical touristy thing to do).
 
I don't know if GM stuck with the pushrod V8 just to keep with 'tradition' or not. Like you guys have said, many Vette buyers see it as a status symbol, not a race car. I'm sure they looked at the increased cost,weight and size of a OHC set up and ruled against it. Lol, I know alot of the stuff in the LS7 was derived from GM's experience with the C5R, but it always reminds me of a sprint car V8.
 
We were excited to announce when Bob Lutz confirmed that GM was working on a higher-performance version of the Corvette. The announcement finally vindicated all those spy shots of a suped-up Corvette test mule, dubbed the "Blue Devil", that was caught undergoing developmental testing for so long. And it gave fans of American muscle something to look forward to in the wake of the new 600-horsepower Dodge Viper.

Now reports are surfacing that the highly-anticipated 600-hp Super-Vette, which is what we called it in the absence of anything more official, will wear the Corvette SS badge. You may recall that after the storied SuperSport badge got diluted with less than SuperSporty products, Chevrolet promised it would only use the name for cars that truly deserved it. We think it's safe to say that the upcoming Corvette SS will be a fitting resurrection of the badge, don't you?

The Corvette SS, which will be known internally as GMX245-SSC (GMX245 is the product code for the C6-generation Corvette), is tipped to make its debut at next year's Detroit show. Some of us here at Autoblog will be cryogenically freezing ourselves until then, we're that stoked.

[Source: Winding Road]

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/02/20/blue-devil-to-be-called-corvette-ss/
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Slightly disappointing, the Corvette has never had the SS package attached to it but eh.
 
jetsetter said:
You may recall that after the storied SuperSport badge got diluted with less than SuperSporty products, Chevrolet promised it would only use the name for cars that truly deserved it.
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Errrgh... not entirely true:
meriva-ss-1g.jpg

:p

But I agree that SS doesn't seem that... menacing. I mean, it's the ultimate factory Corvette, a Viper-killer... and it's second name will be SS ? C'mon! Grow up GM... Corvette 600, Sting Ray even Blue Devil as the press was calling it!
 
add valves and cams, call it ZR-2 and call it a day. and now, bunch of american rednecks will lynch me for my heretic ideas. *hides*
 
Spazatao said:
Errrgh... not entirely true:
meriva-ss-1g.jpg

:p

But I agree that SS doesn't seem that... menacing. I mean, it's the ultimate factory Corvette, a Viper-killer... and it's second name will be SS ? C'mon! Grow up GM... Corvette 600, Sting Ray even Blue Devil as the press was calling it!
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Even back in the 60s you could get an SS 6 cylinder low horsepower vehicle. People just don't remember those.
 
http://www.autoblog.com/2007/02/22/shipping-company-employee-carted-off-to-jail-for-corvette-ss-pic/

We've just learned that EMO TRANS, the shipping company that was hired by General Motors to transport a Corvette SS mule to Germany for testing on the Nurburgring, has fired the employee who took pictures of the vehicle and posted them on the internet. In addition, the unnamed employee has been taken to jail, though we don't know what charges have been filed against him. For our part, we've removed the pics from Autoblog for fear of GM's wrath. The automaker has been reportedly approaching various sites all day requesting the images be removed, so rather than waiting for the phone to ring we've gone ahead and taken them down.

This clearly illustrates how seriously GM is taking the development of the Corvette SS, as well as how utterly embarrased and apologetic EMO TRANS must be for the actions of its employee. It's all fun and games on our side of the fence because we got to see some real, informative shots of this very special Vette, but it reminds us that there's a lot of money on the line. We're sure that GM didn't appreciate pics of this powerplant were available for every other automaker to peruse. Lesson learned, though harder for some than others.

We'll keep you updates as more concrete and verifiable info becomes available.
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:|

This site still seems to have the spy photos...

jetsetter said:
Slightly disappointing, the Corvette has never had the SS package attached to it but eh.
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In the late 50s, Chevrolet briefly raced a Corvette SS:

http://img293.imageshack.**/img293/2651/1957chevroletcorvettesipk3.jpg
 
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Saw the photos and it seems that it is a drive train mule.
 
Seems like it's just a drivetrain mule, strange arrangement on top of the engine though, looks like some kind of water-to-air intercooler...

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More pictures of the test-mule here...
 
GM and Ford both like using water-to-air intercooling. Apparently the guy that took those pictures got arrested.
 
Those pics make me think that if you took a Z06 and put on a black carbon fiber hood, it would look absolutely badass.
 
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