The Right Stuff: 2006 Ford GT vs. Dodge Viper SRT10 vs. Chevrolet Corvette Z06

Motor Trend

6 hours ago

[Editor's Note: This story first appeared in the December 2005 issue of MotorTrend] America is going through a tough patch. Our forces are taking relentless flak in Iraq, and the best place in the country for jazz music has been flattened by a bitch of a storm. Our beloved auto industry also is in big trouble. Too few Big-Three models have the sizzle to sell well without epic discounts, and high gas prices paint a bleak future for the jumbo guzzler pickups and SUVs about to make their debuts. As a result, GM and Ford now enjoy junk-bond investment status, while DaimlerChrysler clings to the next rung up the debt-rating ladder. Layoffs have been announced, bankruptcies rumored. Isn't there any good news out there?
The 2006 Chevy Corvette Z06, Dodge Viper SRT10, and Ford GT compete for top American supercar. The Corvette wins with superior performance and value, while the Ford GT offers unmatched allure and exclusivity, but at a higher price. The Viper is powerful but less refined.
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Why, yes! Look up at yon hilltop, where the morning's first rays of sunshine are backlighting three American supercars, poised to perform heroic acts of derring-do, providing just the sort of ego-boosting, pride-swelling distraction our weary nation could use right about now.
The Chevy Corvette Z06 manages to generate 505 ultraconservative horsepower (see "Dyno Might" sidebar) from a pushrod two-valve small-block V-8 with no high-falutin' blowers and no fancy variable-valve gimcrackery. It weighs 100 pounds less than its next-best-performing Z51 sibling, thanks to extensive use of exotic materials (the structure underlying the carbon fiber and fiberglass skin is all aluminum and magnesium). No foreigner can touch this Vette's 6.3-pound/horsepower rating for under $100 grand. The Z06's price premium over the Z51 is under $20,000--half the surcharge commanded by Chevy's first exotic, the Corvette ZR-1 (in today's dollars). And the Z06 earns bonus points for delivering exoticar performance in a Clark Kent wrapper with the visibility and useful trunk space of a daily-driver--and without incurring a gas-guzzler tax.
Dodge transformed a torquaholic V-10 truck engine into a light, 510-horse aluminum race-car mill that's earned the Viper a long resume of motorsport credits and successfully challenged the Corvette's decades-old status as "America's Sports Car." Its 535-pound-foot torque rating easily out-twists any foreign production car with a five-digit price tag. Its cartoonish schoolboy study-hall styling still looks as powerful, confident, and outrageous as anything ever built in Sant'Agata, Italy. And the fact that this outrageous shape doesn't take to the skies like Superman at 180-plus mph is truly a miracle of aerodynamic engineering.
Ford's GT has rekindled Hank the Deuce's Ferrari feud, taking on the F430 with arguably similar results, though the wins and losses are harder to score this time around because this GT only does battle on public roads, not in international endurance races. That Ford managed to rework the original GT40's pre-wind-tunnel styling to produce significant aerodynamic downforce and enlarge it for comfort without compromising the proportions of that original American icon is astonishing. That such a windmill-tilting 550-horse fantasy car ever found its way down a production line at Ford is yet another marvel. But most miraculous of all is the fact that this Ford is still, in its third model year, finding buyers willing to pay almost double its enormous sticker price.
"Hold the phone!" you sticklers for automotive parity protest. "The Chevy and Dodge start at $65,800 and $86,995, while the Ford's base price equals the sum of those two plus $550. No fair!" Well, lower your voices and listen carefully: Our secret mission here is to first determine a conclusive winner in the long-promised Chevy/Dodge face-off and then press on to determine--informed by the full weight of hard scientific evidence and soft hormonal excretions--whether the GT is indeed twice as fabulous as the winner. It won't be easy--but a battered nation is counting on us, so let's take to the wild blue yonder and give 'em hell.
Our first theater of operations is the DaimlerChrysler Proving Ground near Chelsea, Michigan, and our opening sortie involves a three-hour strafing run on a deserted 1.6-mile concrete straight. These torque-monsters are all tricky to launch hard. Without deft footwork, each will easily stand in the starting box smoking its rear tires right down to the air inside them. The Viper proved least difficult. Dial up just enough revs to break traction (just under 2000 or so), then feed in the power as the gigantic Michelin Pilots hook up. From then on, it's foot-to-floorboard in between shifts. Tester Chirico found the Viper's shifter easier to hustle than the Corvette's (they share internal gearsets), thanks to its roomier gates. Get it all just right, and she'll lay down a 4.0-second blast to 60 mph, en route to a 12.0-second, 121.9-mph quarter-mile run. That's better than last month's car ran, but still a tick or two off the pace of our quickest Viper roadster.
The Z06 is a different animal. Its traction and stability-control systems work wonders in dynamic handling situations, but not on the dragstrip. Coincidently, each car delivers about 1600 pounds of force to the contact patches at 2000 revs (based on the gearing, tire sizes, and rear-wheel dyno horsepower data). Since the Corvette has the least amount of weight pressing down on those tires, the driver's ankle must roll onto the throttle with extreme care as the tires begin to hook up, or they'll still be slipping at the top of first gear. The Corvette compensates for its 12-percent-rated torque deficiency relative to the Viper with overall gearing that's 15 percent shorter, but by spinning the engine to just a hair beyond the 7000-rpm redline, the Corvette can carry first gear through 60 mph, eliminating the 0.2-second a shift requires. The Viper hits its 6000-rev redline at 58 mph.
Traction on our concrete track limited launch performance somewhat, but, by the quarter mile, each car's true power-to-weight shines through, and here the Corvette scores a victory, besting the Viper by four-tenths and 4.7 mph (11.6 seconds at 126.6 mph versus 12.0 at 121.9).
With almost 2000 of its 3497 pounds pressing down on the rear wheels (even more when weight transfers aft at launch), the GT produced Heaven's own hole-shot, as easy as dialing up 2000 revs and rolling off the clutch. Taller ratios take first gear to 62 mph, with the mile-a-minute falling in 3.5 seconds. The quarter flashes by in 11.5 seconds at 128.7 mph in third gear (the others require a shift into fourth).
Bright-red calipers on all three cars squeeze hard enough on their pizza pans to detach the driver's retinas, and our main competitors stopped on the same dime--100 feet from 60 mph (from 100 mph, the Viper halted three feet shorter, at 280 feet). The GT trailed with stops in 114 and 321 feet, which we suspect was tire-traction limited. Each provided superb balance, control, and pedal feel, though the Viper's anti-lock system seemed less refined.
Then it was off to storm the black lake for figure-eight testing. Once again, the Chevy and Dodge posted nearly identical performances, so it fell to our ace pilot to differentiate them subjectively. "The Viper's steering turn-in feel and superior Michelin Pilot Sport tires allow you to push the car with confidence right up to the limits of the tires' grip," he notes. "The Z06 is a more demanding car. It was the hardest to control in the transition from the fast straights into the corners, but it also felt the most capable. The GT was easiest to manage in the transition between trail braking and getting back on the gas through the arc of the figure eight. It's easy to push this car to its limits--it can make a zero feel like a hero." The GT's slightly slower performance is attributable to too-tall gearing for this short course.
We ended our Chelsea operations on a 1.6-mile handling circuit consisting mostly of smooth, flat, medium to high-speed turns with a few slow kinks thrown in for good measure. Dodge provides no electronic safety net, but, despite having the highest torque-to-rear-axle-weight rating of the three, the Viper seldom threatened to break loose its 345/35R19 rear tires and wag its tail. High cornering grip (peaking at 1.27 g) compensated for noticeably less urgent acceleration on the straights to bring the Viper in just 1.3 seconds slower than the Corvette, but the tight footwell, confining cockpit, and a steering wheel location too far aft made this a difficult car to feel comfortable going fast in. There's also a peculiar sensation of sitting way back on the rear axle and swinging the nose from side to side in turns. It's not a bad thing, just odd.
Your humble scribe, who's never held a pro-racing license, found the Corvette the easiest to drive fast on a largely unfamiliar track, by running all timed laps with StabiliTrak set to the "competition mode." The system meters out as much thrust to each rear wheel as surface conditions will permit, allowing a bit of oversteer to point the car, without ever dousing the fire. That's not to say you can flat-foot the go-pedal and just steer around the course--this front-engine car will push if thrown at a curve clumsily. But given the least amount of finesse, the Corvette generates big numbers with ease: highest top speed (133.6 mph), hardest acceleration (0.71 g), and peak braking and cornering within 10 percent of the GT's and Viper's. Score a decisive victory for team bow-tie.
The GT's mid-engine layout makes it behave much more like a textbook race car. Brake too late for a corner or too hard with the front wheels turned, and the rear end--which wears the smallest tires in this test--will come unstuck. Braking performance on the track was stellar, with the GT decelerating 0.1 to 0.2 g harder than the others. Of course, that may be because a major tail-wag on lap one (the GT employs no safety nannies, either) may have prompted extra driver caution on corner entries. The supercharger can easily overwhelm the rear-wheel traction on corner exits as well, but once hooked up it builds speed quickly, reaching within just 1.4 mph of the Corvette's top speed.
During the first hot lap with our initial test car, a couple of over-torqued half-shaft companion-flange bolts failed, sending the open differential into freewheeling mode. The replacement car that laid down these lap times was an engineering car with 40,000 hard miles on it. It dyno'd 21 horsepower down on the original. Those extra ponies, and perhaps more bravado at the entrance to the corners, might well have put the GT ahead of the Corvette (or possibly wadded it into a little ball).
The Viper feels bred of big-boned, working-class stock--honest, brutal, in your face. Nevertheless, its ladder-frame chassis offers a more compliant ride with better bump isolation and lower overall noise levels. Its suspension copes with bumpy turns better than the Chevy's. But the cramped, claustrophobic cockpit, and the offset footwell (the accelerator lines up under the steering wheel) would be hard to live with long-term.
The Corvette is a featherweight that's had all the right vitamins and adhered to an extreme workout regimen in order to take on the big bruisers. It's technical. Agile. Adroit. Its cockpit is the roomiest and most accommodating. It provides the best rearward visibility, and it's the only one that'll accommodate serious luggage, so it's the best choice for a 1000-mile run, though the road, tire, and suspension noises sneaking in past the minimal sound-deadening can be fatiguing. The Z06 is also the only car that doesn't need contortions to get in and out of. The Viper requires a broad-jump over wide, piping-hot door sills, and the GT's guillotine door tops command immense respect after the first emergency-room visit for cranial trauma.
Verdict? The Chevy-versus-Dodge competition was close, but the Vette edged out the Viper in most objective tests at lower cost and with better fuel economy. Its 7000-rev scream and visceral control feel kept our juices boiling and redlined our subjectivometers, so the big giant brass-tone trophy goes to Chevy and America can sleep soundly, knowing our national pride is well defended against the German 911s, English V8 Vantages, and anything Japan can currently throw at us.
How does the Ford GT stack up? Personality-wise it's the Ivy-League old-money fraternity president and rugby-team captain, a product of impeccable breeding. While the Viper and Vette are busy defending America's honor against the upper-middle-class competition, the GT packs the power, poise, and panache to parry and thrust with the blue-blooded Ferrari and Porsche flagships. Is it better than the other cars put together? The raw numbers may not make the case, but its emotional appeal is extraordinary. Sure, it's hard to wriggle into, it's tight fitting, there's no place to put anything, and the ventilation is so-so. The same can be said about Superman's Lycra costume, but if it could make you fly, what would you pay to own it? Dyno Might
Rumors have been flying for the last few months, alleging that the pilot-build Z06s driven and tested in conjunction with the car's Nuerburgring launch were juiced to well beyond their SAE certified 505-horsepower ratings. So we ran all three test cars on a new, state-of-the-art 200-mph Mustang eddy-current dynamometer, courtesy of Wheel-to-Wheel Powertrain, LLC in Madison Heights, Michigan. This dyno simulates actual road and aerodynamic loads to provide more realistic results (hence the rear-wheel-output numbers may trail those generated on less sophisticated dynos). According to program manager Dan Sienkiewicz, the typical drivetrain losses for a car with a manual transmission and independent suspension fall within 14 to 15 percent of crankshaft horsepower. Heavier rotating components (wheels, tires, axles, joints) increase losses, as do heftier gears, high viscosity lubricants, etc.
Based on these expectations, the dyno printouts suggest our Z06 was producing more like 530 horses. But Chevy isn't alone underestimating the output of its hero motor: These figures show the Viper's V-10 also was good for 530 horses, and the GT's supercharged V-8 was pumping out at least 600 ponies.
As for those initial Corvettes, the 0.3-second difference in 0-to-60-mph times between the original pilot-build test car and this regular production car is largely attributable to launch conditions at two different test tracks, while the one-tenth-second, half-mph difference in the quarter mile suggests the cars are equally strong.