Photo: ImportRace / YouTube
The Chevrolet Corvette C8, now offered as the Stingray, Z06, and E-Ray models, has been around in the U.S. auto market since 2020. But that means the now-defunct C7 generation is still young enough to stick around town or at your local quarter-mile drag strip.
Everyone loves the C8 because Team Corvette had the audacity to convince their top brass at Chevrolet and General Motors that a revolutionary shift to a mid-engine format would help “America’s sports car” thrive. They were more than right: C8 sales in the first six months of the year produced the best H1 result since 2015!
But that’s not to say the C7 iteration wasn’t great in its own right, especially since Chevrolet only ran with it for five model years, from 2014 to 2019. The high-performance Z06 version arrived after the Stingray, as is tradition, for the 2015 model year at the North American International Auto Show and featured a supercharged and intercooled LT4 V8 engine that made 650 horsepower, just 20 hp shy of the current C8 Corvette Z06.
As such, thanks to its performance credentials, the C7 Chevy Corvette Z06 remains a worthy entry in the sports car arena even today, nearly a decade later. But there’s no need to take our word for it, as we have a telling example from the local quarter-mile drag strip where a crimson example has battled everything and everyone, old and new, in stock and modified form.
The good people of the racing-focused team ImportRace channel on YouTube have returned to their usual home: Island Dragway in Great Meadows, New Jersey, and that’s where the videographer captured the crimson C7 Z06 ready for its first skirmish with one of Chevrolet’s old-school legends, a Chevrolet Bel Air. The old-school coupe has been fully modified to handle the rigors of modern quarter-mile drag racing, and the two Chevys put on a show and looked neck-and-neck for a good portion of the race.
Ultimately, though, the modern rogue prevailed, nailing an 11.17-second pass against the Chevy Bel Air’s 12.52-second effort. Next, the Z06 got into a couple of skirmishes with a black-with-blue-accented Fox Body Ford Mustang. The first tussle was a statement to the Fox Body platform, which is primed for modifications, as the Z06 was narrowly beaten by the slightly slower Mustang (11.3 vs. 11.1 seconds) because the Blue Oval driver had a much better reaction time.
Revenge came quickly and this time the Fox Body Mustang had no reply. Last but not least, the Corvette driver probably got a confidence boost and decided to take on a mild-looking Audi S3 sedan. However, this one was perhaps a surprise because it shot out of its lane like a rocket and nailed a 10.35-second pass against the C7's 12.55-second effort. Alas, this time, the reaction time advantage was on its side, so this one was also counted as a win.
