C6 Corvette Z06 Leads Police Officer on the Wildest Chase of His Career

Turns out, you can’t launch a C6 Corvette Z06 ‘Dukes of Hazard’ style and expect it to roll away unscathed.

It’s no secret that the Corvette was built from the get-go to be a performer, in addition to an affordable, stylish sports car. As such, it’s also no secret that more than a few criminals like the Corvette for that very reason, while there are also a handful of bad egg owners who don’t treat their cars with the respect they deserve. We’ve seen our fair share of Corvette-involved police chases over the years, but one that Alpharetta, Georgia police officer Mark Tappan was involved in back in 2009 with a C6 Corvette Z06 is easily one of the wildest such stories we’ve ever heard. Luckily, he recently shared this story with the world via VINwiki.

At that time, Tappan was a fairly green police officer with roughly three years of experience under his duty belt. At around two in the morning during a reasonably heavy rain, he spotted a brand new at-the-time C6 Corvette Z06 that was nice and shiny, and in fact, still had some window sticker residue left on it. Tappan noticed that the driver was moving around in their lane a bit, drifting over and then making quick corrections, which prompted him to light up the sports car.

The Corvette driver began to slow down, making it look like he was searching for a good place to pull over. However, once the road turned straight, he gunned it and took off, leaving Tappan and his Impala in the dust. However, the officer was quite familiar with the area, which the Corvette driver clearly was not. As the sports car hit speeds of 100 mph, Tappan radio’d in and told dispatch that it was about to wreck, and that’s precisely what happened – but in rather spectacular fashion.

The Z06 drove through the mall parking lot onto an embankment and quite literally launched his car in the air, Dukes of Hazard style. Humorously, Tappan grew up a big fan of that show, and was actually amused by the whole thing, a feeling we can relate to. Unlike what typically happened in Dukes, however, the Corvette landed and promptly caught on fire, burning to a crisp as the driver hopped out and immediately gave up, admitting he was drunk. A sad end to a crazy chase, of course, but also a story worth retelling, too.

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