Video: 2006 Corvette Z06 Half-Mile Speed Test

Even after all these years, the C6 Corvette Z06 is still a top performer — and that performance can be had for a bargain price.

Sure, the all-new, mid-engine C8 Corvette is all the rage now. It’s all over automotive news sites and it positively dominates our homepage as of late. It’s important to remember, though, that there are plenty of other Corvettes out there, and many of them are still impressive performers even by today’s standards. Case in point, the C6 Z06.

Today’s video comes to us from the Johnny Bohmer Proving Grounds. The “proving grounds” in question are actually a landing strip for the Space Shuttle in Florida. It’s a three-mile-long runway, designed to be one of the flattest, most consistent surfaces on Earth.

NASA engineers actually had to account for the Earth’s curvature when designing the place. As a result, there’s only about 1/4″ of variance from end to end. If it’s good enough for the Space Shuttle, then it’s good enough for sports cars, too.

In this case, the sports car in question is a 2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z06. These cars are a tremendous bargain right now. Clean C6 Z06s regularly change hands for $25,000 or less. As you’ll soon see, they’re far from outdated. In fact, they’re still quite fast almost a decade and a half later.

The 2006 Z06 famously advertised 505 horsepower on its fender badges. The 7.0 liter, 427 cubic inch LS7 V8 was the largest small block Chevrolet V8 ever built at that time. It remains one of the most powerful normally aspirated V8s ever installed in an American car.

Half-Mile Hijinks

In this video, we see it accelerate from a standing start to the half-mile mark, one-sixth of the runway’s total distance. In that space, it accelerated to just under 150 miles per hour.

When it was new, it laid down a zero to 60 time of just 3.5 seconds according to an instrumented test from Motor Trend. In that same test, it covered the quarter-mile in just 11.5 seconds at a blistering 127.1 miles per hour. They also cite a top speed of over 190 miles per hour.

Those are still impressive numbers in 2020. You’ll spend considerably less for a C6 Corvette Z06 than you would for a brand new Mustang GT or a Camaro SS — over ten grand less, in some cases. That’s some savings for a car that can match or exceed its performance at every turn, both literally and figuratively.

Corvettes offer a tremendous performance bargain when new. That value proposition gets exponentially better as these cars age. Due to the careful nature of most Corvette owners, many of these cars live pampered lives and see very few miles. That makes buying used an even better idea than it would be with most performance cars.

Sure, the new, mid-engine Corvette is great — but don’t let that stop you from getting the deal of a lifetime on one of the hottest performance cars of this century. If you’re looking for a great value on your next tire-shredding performance machine, look no further than a C6 Z06.

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