[VIDEO] Michelle Rodriguez Drives a 1,000-HP Corvette Z06

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[VIDEO] Michelle Rodriguez Drives a 1,000-HP Corvette Z06


When Jack Brown was a New York Police Department detective, he once got into a scuffle with a suspect over a gun, falling backwards onto the ground and getting shot three inches from his chest.

“I said I was gonna reward myself when I retired,” Brown says in the debut episode of Riding Shotgun with Michelle Rodriguez, better known as Lefty Ortiz in the Fast & Furious movies. “I always wanted a Corvette.”

So guess what was in his driveway soon after?

Unfortunately, Brown’s black 2008 Z06 proved to be too slow for him after just two weeks.

A visit to a shop upped the ante to 650 horsepower, “which was fast but still wasn’t fast enough,” Brown admitted.

[VIDEO] Michelle Rodriguez Drives a 1,000-HP Corvette Z06

That’s when he decided to go all out and made everything under the hood custom, noting that the only thing still original is the alternator.

“This is Frankenstein,” Brown says.

“On steroids!” Rodriguez chimes in.

Indeed, the motor uses custom APS twin turbos to produce 1268 horsepower, available in three stages.

There’s no nitrous in the back, just a switch in the ashtray that brings the turbo boost up to 11 pounds and a little red button on the shifter that ups it even more. “If you haven’t had enough speed, you hold the red button,” Brown says, “and you’re gone!”

“You’re an adrenaline junkie,” Rodriguez tells him.

“It just feels so good when your head sinks into the leather when you shift and step on it,” Brown admits. “It’s nice.”

Nice enough to take his mind off the job that he started missing right away once he had retired, he says with a grin.

And nice enough to reach a whopping 187 mph on the street. “I don’t know if I can say that,” he quips.

When the 2008 Z06 came out, it was the fastest Corvette ever produced by Chevy.

“That would be plenty of power for most people,” Rodriguez says, “but it wasn’t enough for Jack.”

While the standard Z06 reached 0-60 in 4 seconds, Brown’s new system cuts that time to a miniscule 2.8 seconds.

All that power meant upgrades for the rest of the Corvette, though, including a custom cooling system with methanol injection to keep the engine from overheating, new wheels, new brakes, new suspension, custom exhaust, five-point racing harness, and “the list goes on and on,” Rodriguez notes.

[VIDEO] Michelle Rodriguez Drives a 1,000-HP Corvette Z06


She and Pete Tremper, labeled an advanced driving expert, take the Corvette onto the track at New Jersey Motorsports Park, and they have a blast.

“This thing is screaming!” she says. “I love this thing!’

“Like a 727 on takeoff!” is Pete’s take on the monster Corvette.

“What’d we get up to?” he asks her after one boost.

“I don’t know – I wasn’t even looking,” says Rodriguez, who was too busy just enjoying herself to notice.

“This thing is so cool,” she tells Brown once she’s finished on the track. “It wants to go. If there’s anything I learned about this car, it’s that it wants to go – and it wants to go fast now! There really seemed to be no limit to how fast I could go.”

In fact, she loved the car so much, she asked Brown if she could sign her name under the hood, which he eagerly allowed.


Source:
Riding Shotgun with Michelle Rodriguez

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