[VIDEO] Watch Hennessey Dyno its Stock C8 Corvette Z06 Before the Mods Begin!

The Hennessey Z06 is back! Somehow, the famed Texas tuning shop/hypercar manufacturer has resisted the temptation to mod for over a month. The surprising patience of the Sealy madmen has afforded us behind-the-scenes access to each step in the extensive shakedown process they are implementing with their first stock flat-plane LT6 powertrain, from break-in, to putting a 1,000-horse Blackwing through its paces, to the current catch of the day: Dyno runs!

Leading up to Z06’s return to its glorious naturally aspirated roots, your humble author was obsessed with the production car records that a road-going C8.R engine could have in its sights. Chevrolet engineers swung for the fences and exceeded even my most outlandish challenges for the Gemini Project. The LT6 set a new bar for size and torque in a 180-degree V8. It achieved the highest redline of any production American performance car in history and makes so much power that it not only easily out-muscles any free-breathing American powerplant that came before – including the Viper’s mighty 8.4L V10 – but also puts its supercharged 6.2L predecessor in its rearview by 20 horses! I bring this up for two reasons: 1. With the twin-turbo ZR1 on the horizon, it is easy to forget exactly how impressive the Z06 is, and 2. Thinking back, there was one car that we were all hoping to see the Z make attainable to the masses: the 458 Speciale. The final Ferrari with a naturally aspirated V8 famously squeezed 597 HP from 4.5 liters and still wears the “specific horsepower” crown with a stratospheric 132.66 horses per liter – if you’re curious, the Z06’s 121.82 HP/L is sixth all-time in the NA category after the Speciale, the Ferrari 812 Competizione (126 HP/L), the 992 Porsche 911 GT3 (125.75), the base 458 Italia (124.88), and the Honda S2000 that milked 123.5 horses out of each of its two liters).

The context of the legendary 458 Speciale – which carries a current #2 or “excellent condition” value of $508,000, according to Hagerty – is important as we return to Hennessey’s dyno run. We knew the Z would sound great, but when all is said and done, the Z is making more power at the wheels than Ferrari’s greatest V8 makes at the crank, which is absolutely incredible! Its dyno number of 600.36 HP at a lofty 8,340 also might mean that Chevrolet is slightly underrating the Z06’s brawn. Applying the traditional but not-quite scientific 15% drivetrain loss rule to the Z places the LT6 in Hellcat territory (around 707 ponies) at the crank! Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that the flat-plane Corvette that was supposed to be a letdown in the torque department maxes out at 406.55 lb.-ft. of twist (at 6,730 rpm, but the curve is more-or-less flat from about 3,300 all the way to redline) at its tires. This means that it is out-torquing the crank ratings of both the Speciale and several famed pushrod small block Chevy’s, including the 5.7L LS6 and the 6.0L LS2!

GM has a genuine masterpiece on its hands! Hennessey is known for forced induction, but we’re hoping that they have a different playbook in mind for their LT6 upgrades. As Tadge told Emelia, “Please don’t put turbos on my car!” The lack of power adders is what makes the Z “Speciale!”

Source:
Hennessey Performance

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