[VIDEO] The 2025 Corvette ZR1 Was So Powerful, It Broke GM’s Dynos – Corvette: Sales, News & Lifestyle

Screenshot Credit: Car & Driver

One of the characteristics of the new 2025 Corvette ZR1 is that it’s a torque monster. The big number is that the LT7 delivers 828 lb-ft of torque but what is really amazing about the car is that you’re getting 800+ lb-ft of torque from 3000 to 7000 RPM. In the ZR1 reveal video from Car and Driver with Carlos Lago, Executive Corvette Chief Engineer Tadge Juechter likens the feeling of the ZR1’s torque to being launched from an aircraft catapult.

Tadge and Carlos then get into a discussion about a time one of the early prototype engines was placed on the dyno. Before we get to that story, I am reminded of this early C8 rumor that we so wanted to believe back in the day. Maybe they were true…

In the run up to the C8 Corvette, we heard rumors of the early prototypes that were so powerful they twisted the body and broke the rear glass. Hagerty.com’s Don Sherman wrote this back in March of 2019 the following:

The second issue is a structural distortion of the aluminum spaceframe experienced during testing a prototype equipped with the 900-1000 horsepower twin-turbo V-8. The twist in back was enough to fracture the glass hatch covering the engine. Be glad this flaw was discovered in advance of your top speed runs in Chevy’s designated Ferrari-beater.

That story relayed by Sherman was widely shared at the time, and also back in March 2019 we learned “the frame issue was solved long ago with the help of GM’s Cray Supercomputer which analyzed the frame structure and identified the areas that needed reinforcement. GM’s plans are to use just one chassis for all C8 models so now the base “Stingray” model will have the same reinforcements as the ZORA model.”

While we may be conflating two different events, it appears that rumors of the early high performance C8 prototypes breaking things was apparently true. Tadge confirms the story with Carlos that the early ZR1 prototypes were breaking GM’s dynos, and one time a prototype engine “escaped the dyno” after it broke its moorings. Tadge recounts the story here:

“We’ve burned up a lot of dynos. We actually had to put in new dynos for the C7 for the 755 horsepower. Nobody ever imagined we’d be operating in that range, so we actually put in new dynos. And they were thinking, ‘oh these are good for a thousand [horsepower].’ Well, we turned out we needed more than that. So yeah, this engine ripped up the dynos pretty good. So there’s parallel development of the engine and the dyno infrastructure here at General Motors. In fact, one engine escaped the dyno. It tore itself off the stand, it became completely displaced, actually breaking its moorings and so we had to repair the dyno. The engine was fine…put it back on the dyno and continued our work. We had re-engineered a lot of the support systems for the engine.”

Carlos says, “I bet your engine designer felt like a proud parent at that point,” and Tadge replies, “Right! Oh! High fives…you break the dyno!”

We queued up that part of this discussion here, but really, watch the entire conversation because this is a very remarkable Corvette and many tidbits of info are dropped. When Carlos asks Tadge if he was proud that this was the car he was going out on, Tadge called it a “mic drop.”

Indeed!

Thanks to Les Stanford Chevrolet for sponsoring our coverage of the ZR1 reveal. Click here to join their Corvette ZR1 waiting list at America’s Corvette King…Les Stanford Chevrolet!

Source:

Car and Driver / YouTube

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