Comparison Tests
Ever since the 911 hit U.S. showrooms in 1965, the Chevrolet Corvette and Porsche’s most iconic car have been facing off on racetracks and canyon roads all over the world. And through the years, the cars have displayed immensely diverse characteristics: The American is straightforward yet effective and entertaining; the German is slightly strange yet undeniably sophisticated.
The layout of each car has hardly changed since inception. A 1965 Corvette used a fiberglass body and a transverse leaf spring out back. It looked cool but was a little low-rent inside, had a monster V-8 up front driving the rear wheels, and seated just two. It’s the same with today’s sixth-generation Corvette.
The output of that original Porsche 911—148 horsepower from 2.0 liters—was a bit wimpy compared with that of today’s car (345 horses, 3.6 liters), but the horizontally opposed six still hung out behind the rear axle. The 911 has always had room for two full-size people up front and a couple of miniature versions behind them, as well as a decent front trunk. And even those who could not care less about cars can see the family resemblance between that first 911 and its modern counterpart.
The first 911 with a turbocharger appeared stateside in 1976, powered by a 3.0-liter flat-six that made a relatively modest 247 horsepower and gave rise to the term “turbo lag.” A combination of light-switch throttle response and scary lift-throttle oversteer, courtesy of the car’s semi-trailing-arm rear suspension and all that weight out back, resulted in a car that intimidated even the bravest drivers on a wet road. Still, that first 911 Turbo was regarded as an out-and-out supercar, a reputation it has held for the 34 intervening years.
That couldn’t quite be said of the Corvette. Back in the early days of this rivalry, a Corvette would dole out a straight-line ass whupping to any 911, but by the time the Turbo arrived on the scene, the Corvette had been reduced to an emissions-emasculated shadow of its former self. Between the dawn of the 911 Turbo and the arrival of the 2001 Z06, the only Corvette that could be compared with the Turbo was the Lotus-engineered ZR1 of 1990 to 1995.
The Z06, based on the fifth-generation Corvette architecture, brought the car back into the supercar realm. The subsequent sixth-gen car was good enough to come in a close third to a second-place 911 Turbo in a three-car comparo in Germany [“The Sports-Car World Cup,” September 2006], won by the Ferrari F430. So we eagerly anticipated putting the even faster, more refined, and markedly more expensive Corvette ZR1 up against a 911 Turbo in early 2009. But when that time came, Porsche mysteriously couldn’t find a car to make available to us for a comparison with a ZR1, a Lamborghini Murciélago, a Dodge Viper SRT10, and a Mercedes SL65 AMG Black Series [“Unnatural Selection,” March 2009]. The ZR1 won, and Porsche no doubt heard that the victory put Mercedes-Benz’s aristocratic schnoz out of joint.
Since then, the Turbo, along with the rest of the 911 range that’s based on the 997 architecture introduced in model year 2005, has been revised. This time, Porsche found us a Turbo, which we picked up in Los Angeles. Then, keys to a ZR1 in hand, we headed off to the great driving roads of central California and later to the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca track.
From the C/D Archives: 1991 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1 vs. 1991 Porsche 911 Turbo (April 1991)
The Chevrolet Corvette and the Porsche 911 have one of the greatest long-standing rivalries in the automotive universe. With a heavily reworked 911 Turbo arriving for 2010, we couldn’t help but line it up next to the awesome, 638-hp Corvette ZR1 for another Detroit-versus-Stuttgart showdown. You can read all about it here, where you’ll see that the results have changed significantly from when these two icons first squared off in 1991. Back then, the Turbo was rear-wheel-drive only and produced just 315 hp from an air-cooled 3.3-liter flat-six with a single turbocharger. The first-generation ZR-1—which was built on the fourth-gen Corvette platform—by comparison, packed a high-tech, 5.7-liter DOHC V-8 that made 375 hp. The ZR1 still holds the horsepower advantage, but the Porsche continues to prove that there’s more to it than that.
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