GM’s newest sports car tops 1,000 horsepower

DETROIT — General Motors’ newest Chevrolet Corvette will be the most powerful version of the American sports car ever produced — and it’s not even close.

The Detroit automaker said Thursday the 2025 Chevy Corvette ZR1 will be powered by a twin-turbocharged, 5.5-liter, V8 engine capable of more than 1,000 horsepower — a first for Corvette — and 828 foot-pounds of torque, placing it among the ranks of supercars that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“This thing pulls like a freight train,” Tadge Juechter, Corvette’s executive chief engineer since 2006, said during a media event. “We expect this car to be essentially the fastest car we’ve ever built by a long measure.”

The prior most-powerful Corvette was GM’s last ZR1 for the 2019 model year. It produced 755 horsepower and 715 foot-pounds of torque with a 6.2-liter, V8 supercharged engine.

Juechter said the new ZR1 will “comfortably” have a top speed higher than the Corvette’s previous top speed of 212 mph.

GM said pricing for the 2025 Corvette ZR1, including an additional “ZTK” performance package, will be released closer to when the vehicle goes into production next year. The 2019 Corvette ZR1 started at $121,000.

The ZR1 joins what GM is calling the “Corvette family,” including the “everyman’s sports car” Corvette Stingray, which starts at about $70,000; the hybrid E-Ray; and the roughly $112,000 Z06 track car.

“We’re happy with the way it’s going. This is the next step in that whole approach,” said Brad Franz, director of Chevy car and crossover marketing.

GM previously confirmed an all-electric Corvette is coming, but it has not given a timeframe. A Corvette SUV also has been under consideration for several years. Franz declined to comment on either vehicle.

Wall Street analysts have said GM could better leverage the Corvette brand by expanding models and, to an extent, sales. In late 2019, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said a Corvette sub-brand could be worth between $7 billion and $12 billion.

Sales of the Chevrolet Corvette have totaled roughly 34,500 vehicles for each of the past two years. In 2019, the automaker redefined the iconic sports car, swapping its front-engine design for a mid-engine build to increase performance and handling.

Models such as the ZR1 are low-volume vehicles designed to attract buzz to the brand and entice drivers toward less-expensive Corvettes.

“The ZR1 is the range-topper. It’s the halo vehicle. It’ll bring tons of attention to the car and actually help sell the other models,” Juechter said. “It’s part of the ongoing business strategy to keep the product relevant over a relatively long lifecycle.”

Other performance models have helped to lift Corvette’s average transaction price to roughly $106,000.

Franz said price point is expected to continue to rise with the introduction of ZR1 and sales growth of the track-focused Z06, whose average buyer has a household income of $311,000.

Additional sales of the hybrid Corvette, which starts at about $105,000, also should help boost Corvette’s revenue. GM plans to increase production of the E-Ray to 10% of total production capacity from current levels at 2% to 3% currently, Franz said.

The performance trickle-down effect also has assisted in keeping the sole plant that produces Corvette in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on two shifts since 2019.