Building the Beast | Issue 109 | Corvette Magazine
Impressive motor and the noise it makes is positively insane. One of the best sounding street engines ever... LSJ
Back in the old days when living in South Africa, there were no practical speed limits and big empty highways, a few ZR1s came through. Performance wise it took a F40 and later the Diablo to smoke a Zr1 at speed, well up to 175 or 180 or so. The mods to the ZR1 were losing the cats, losing the butterlfies on the intake trumpets, siamesing the intake trumpets and fitting an exhaust cam in place of the intake cam, plus remapping the motor. These mods were suggested by Kim baker who raced Vettes in USA and worked with GM. Have no idea what they put out with the mods, but it was a motor that just kept on comming, harder and harder as it pulled like banshee to redline, smooth too. It was only the diablo when it came out that felt like it had the same pull at speed. Driving there was usualy from 60 or 70 to 160. A countach was nowhere near a Zr1 in high speed power or aero stability. The vette was actualy really good at speed, the only issue beign the rear hatch seal blowing out around 155, sacred the crap out of me the first time that hapened. Fatsest I have driven a car, 91 vette 183 indicated on the digital speedo. Those broken white lines become a grey blur. I do remember one dude maxed out his diablo at 200 or whatever it did, the right rear tire delaminated and tore up the bodywork, the awd saved him he said. Michelin wanted the tire to study what went wrong.
