TimeOut

The Joy of Driving - 10 days with the Corvette ZHZ

Jon Z (Z3)

 

   

   When it comes to cars, I love looking at them,but never really got into them as a hobby. Because I live in Manhattan, there is never really the need to drive a car; and when I go to my mom's house in suburban New Jersey, I would usually help her with errands driving around in her four-door family-style sedan, which is hardly exciting.

    Two weeks ago I went to California to visit a friend, and rented the new Chevrolet Corvette ZHZ convertible from Hertz in Los Angeles International Airport.

    For the first time, I finally experienced the "joy of driving"!

    A little bit of background info. The Corvette ZHZ was a partnership between the rental car company Hertz and GM.  Introduced in 2008 to Hertz's fun collection, it is a limited edition of 500 units, available in several major US cities.

    Mechanically, the Corvette ZHZ sports a LS36.2L V8 aluminum-block engine with dual-mode performance exhaust and 436 horsepower, an automatic transmission with a 6-speed paddle shift, Magnetic Selective Ride Control, which allows the driver to switch between "tour" or"sport" mode with a turn of a notch, and 7-spoke large racing wheels with Goodyear Eagle F1 EMT Supercar tires.

    Here are some impressions of the car, after driving it for 10 days and 1500 miles (round trip from LA to San Francisco, and then locally in southern California):

    Cosmetically it sports a distinctive bright yellow body with black racing stripe - very stunning and suitable for sunny southern California. The shape is very aerodynamic, well-proportioned, and has soft and natural curves. I like the headlights quite much, and prefer them over the "flip" hidden headlights of the previous version. It's a very beautiful car in my opinion.

 

  

    The 4 exhaust tailpipes - a sign of performance.

 

 

   The car activates via a remote sensor mechanism. In order to unlock the doors and turn on the engine,one only needs to have the key in close vicinity (e.g. the driver's pocket) -very convenient.

    Pressing the engine power-on button gives off a very loud and virile "vrrroooom" engine sound, accompanied by the low frequency humming and vibration, adding excited anticipation to the fun drive to come.

    The driving experience is quite comfortable. Although Corvette is categorized as "exotic", it does not sit as low as many of the other exotics, hence offers a nice and far view in to the horizon. The engine is in the front, so it is not as loud as the mid-engine sports cars. The leather seats are comfortable and ergonomic. The interior has adequate amenities for entertainment and comfort such as CD player, XM/Sirius Radio, a decent sound system, and climate control.

    In the "sport" mode, the handling is very stiff and responsive, and the acceleration is powerful. Even at close to 100 miles per hour, the car feels very solid on the roads and responds swiftly. It feels great yet still very comfortable. The"tour" mode, however, makes the handling quite wobbly, does not add much comfort, and I think defeats the purpose of this car. I would not recommend driving it in the "tour" mode.

    The official fuel efficiency is 24 MPG highway and 15 MPG city, but I feel that in the "sport" driving mode,it gets quite a bit less. Because the gas tank holds only 18 gallons, I had to look for a gas station every 2 days.

 

  

   A beautifully designed and great driving machine as it is, it is without faults. First, the craftmanship of some of the interior parts is still... quite GM, without excessive attention to detail. For example,some of the plastic pieces on the dashboard have slightly rough and uneven edges, and the plastic latch release mechanism for opening the soft top feels cheap and awkward to operate. My biggest complaint is the trunk door - with normal force, it does not shut all the way, leaving a very thin gap. This thin gap it prevents the operation of the convertible top. So I often had to get out of the car, reopen the trunk door, and SLAM it down as if I hate the thing with passion, and only then would it shut properly. I hope future models will not have this types of low-level, easily mendable mistakes.

    Overall, I think it is a great fun car andat roughly $65 to $80K, a great value for an exotic sports car. This experience has definitely sparked my interest in automobiles. I hope there is a hard-top convertible version in the pipeline. That's a car I am interested in!

 

  

    Hope you've enjoyed the photo and the brief report.

Cheers!

Jon (Z3)

       

This message has been edited by Z3 on 2009-08-31 18:27:36 This message has been edited by Z3 on 2009-08-31 20:24:08

I like that in the one picture your shirt matched the color of the car.  Yellow is one of my favorite colors for a sportscar.  I enjoyed your travelogue with the car at various scenic locations along the coast.  I hope you had fun in California!

Cheers,
Daos

Wow! Look at the last photo! The car even clears the concrete curbs in parking lots. Even my four door "family" car will sometimes scratch on those concrete curbs. I park far and away from them after painfully learning my lesson.

FYI - The current generation of Corvette cars is known by Corvette enthusiasts as the "C6" version. Perhaps one of the largest differences between the C6 and the previous C5 version is the change to the design of the headlamps. Many loyalist Corvette owners were not pleased with the change to fixed headlamps and many felt the pop-up headlamps were more authentic; this has actually sparked some debate among Corvette owners. Personally, I understand the need to change to the new design, because in the C6, High-intensity discharge xenon headlamps are more easily applied in a fixed headlight.

How did you like the handling and cornering of the car? The next time you're in Southern California or Northern California, you might consider to take your car on some of the trademark twisty canyon roads there where car movies and car commercials are filmed.

Thanks for the great photos and the introduction to the Corvette!

with the new fixed headlights, they were fixed from 1953 through 1962.

Obviously I am no expert when it comes to driving, but the I feel very "together" with the car.

Yes it is relatively high for a sports car, which I think offers a good balance between comfort and performance.

I've had some fun mountain curvy roads en route from San Luis Obispo to Pebble Beach. I passed by this famous bridge (in the photo, forgot the name).

The xenon lights are great. The very few times I actually got out of the car and saw the lights, I enjoyed their look.


Jon (Z3)

Does Hertz have any special rules for renting sports cars.

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I really liked your pics and the satisfaction you had from your experience was clear from your last pic very nice post

S

.. that's an idea: renting a "Vette" on your holidays, that doubles the fun.

Nice report Jon, thanks very much for the great pictures !

Filip

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in flip flop sandals .... yeah .. you are my kind of man :0))
Great report
Cheers

generally the US manufacturers prefer to add engine size rather than getting best power out of what they've got, but the C6 and this version seem to have balanced it quite nicely. its still a huge engine for the size of car, but powerful and fast. i know your not a driving expert Jon, but how fast did you take it? i understand its supposed to do about 190mph or more so your 'near 100mph' seems very slow

i'm looking forward, when i move, to getting rid of the SUV and buying something with a bit more power. nothing like this, but decently fast for UK roads.

great pics Jon and a good choice of rental car.

Graham

During the day I would go 80mph, at night I would go 100 to maybe 105mph max.

Anything faster would run too high a risk of inviting tickets, and I also know I wouldn't be able to respond fast enough=)

You are right, for an US car, it is quite amazing!

...is super successful at Le Mans.

I think only Aston Martin has beaten them in the GT1 class. Which isn't bad for a bump-stick engine (even if it is humungous).

Fun car to drive, but like all these things ('things' being huge, fasts cars) you need a lot of space, not good for narrow, windy roads.

Thanks for your thoughts on the C6!

I love Xenon headlights and once you get a car with Xenon headlights, it's difficult to go back.

Cheers,
AT

I have thought about renting the non vert version to take to a track day. I'm just worried that when I bring it back with worn out tires it will cause issues.