2025 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 review

The Chevrolet Corvette Stingray is already a formidable piece of performance with serious supercar credentials. On Australian roads, you'd be hard-pressed to find any need for more power, but as is the case for any high-end performance car, there's always room for more.

In the case of the Corvette Z06, the 'more' sees it given a heart transplant, with the Stingray's 6.2-litre small-block V8 swapped for a 5.5-litre unit derived from Chevrolet's Corvette racing program.

In typical Chevrolet style, the new LT6 engine retains the same bore spacing as other members of the LS engine range, to keep it in the iconic small-block family, but this engine swaps pushrods for an overhead-cam design and can rev to an insane peak of 8600rpm.

Internals are strengthened, engine lubrication is via a dry sump system... All of the hallmarks of a competition-ready track weapon are there. In this case, though, you can screw number plates to it and drive it on Australian roads.

Inside the cabin, while still clearly designed to eke out peak performance, come leather-lines and it's stuffed with creature comforts, so don't expect the Corvette Z06 to be a one-trick track pony.

We spent a week behind the wheel of the Z06 to see what it can do.

The current Australian Corvette line-up covers three models, the Stingray, E-Ray, and Z06. Pricing starts from $182,000 for the entry-level Stingray 2LT coupe with higher-spec 3LT and convertible options available.

It's worth noting that all Corvette 'coupes' are actually targa tops, so you can enjoy the open air in any Corvette. Convertible models feature a powered roof instead.

The E-Ray adds an electrically driven front axle to the Stingray's 6.2-litre V8 for a formidable performance hybrid. It's available as a coupe only from $275,000 before on-road costs.

The heaviest hitter in the Australian Corvette range, however, is the Z06. Surprisingly, though, its $336,000 price tag doesn't get you the most powerful Corvette. With 475kW and 595Nm outputs, the Z06 actually trails the E-Ray's 488kW/806Nm combined figures.

That might seem a little odd, but Chevrolet's performance hierarchy sees the rear-wheel-drive Z06 configured to deliver consistent performance under the extremes of track work. Our North American friends get access to a twin-turbo ZR1 with even more outrageous figures, but there's been no confirmation of that model for Australia.

If you were cross-shopping rivals, the $336,000 Corvette Z06 shows its advantage with similarly priced rivals hard to find.

A Porsche 911 Carrera S would set you back $342,700 before options and on-road costs. Porsche's 3.0-litre twin-turbo flat-six engine delivers 353kW and 530Nm, so while it's not underpowered by any stretch of the imagination, it can't match the Corvette's fire power.

The new-generation Maserati GranTurismo Modena swaps its previous V8 for a 365kW/600Nm 3.0-litre V6, and as suggested by the name, it fits the bill for a high-performance tourer with a more opulent cabin and a few more creature comforts inside. The more powerful GranTurismo Trofeo turns up the heat, but also pushes pricing past $420,000.

If the Corvette's appeal lies in its mid-engine layout, the McLaren range offers the closest match, but the $436,615 McLaren GTS V8 or $495,004 Artura hybrid V6 require a larger outlay than the Corvette. While moving into a mid-engine Ferrari 296GTB is a much more serious commitment at $604,000 (all before on-road costs).

The pedigree of the Corvette may be debatable alongside European supercar makers with far-reaching histories or race teams expanding into production car manufacturing, but with 72 years under its belt, the Corvette isn't exactly short on credentials.

No one would dare suggest that over $300,000 is a small amount of money, but lined up against competitors, the Corvette Z06 stands as a relative bargain for its race-ready potential.

The thing that often surprises about supercars in the metal is just how compact they are. That's not the case here, though. At over 4.7 metres in length and just over 2.0 metres wide, the Corvette isn't exactly space-constrained.

In the interior, though, the cabin is still intimate. Chevrolet's decision to wrap driver controls around the driver makes for a fighter jet-like feel. This is a sports car through and through with a low-slung seating position, high sills, and grippy seats. It is fantastically form-fitted for the driver, but getting in and out of the driver's seat isn't exactly graceful.

With a powered seat and steering column, the Corvette would greatly benefit from an easy-entry function but none is fitted. The steering wheel sits quite low too, which is great for the driver, but right where you need to swing your legs when getting in or out.

Perhaps a little surprisingly, the interior of our test car was incredibly tasteful, finished in a very subtle black nappa leather and microsuede interior with just a sweep of cool grey across the dash and doors for a bit of contrast. If you like, you can opt for much brighter trim combinations, and if you stick with the standard GT2 seats instead of the Competition seats fitted here, you get the seat trim in the contrasting colour as well.

The driver focus is almost unrelenting, and the passenger gets almost walled off by the centre console arm that forms the control bar for the driver. Ergonomically, having the climate controls and seat heating and cooling functions in one long single line is a bit of a flop. The space facing the driver with the push-pull tab gear selector, drive-mode selector, and cupholders could be much more cleverly configured.

Despite the very trackable status of the Z06, the interior is fully equipped with electrically adjustable front seats with heating and cooling, and high-quality leather, carbon fibre, and metallic finishes throughout.

The seats are a magical mix of grippy and well bolstered for cornering support without being punishing on longer drives. Given the Corvette is already tricky to get out of, the last thing you need is a numb bum or sore back on the way out.

Cabin storage is a little more like what you'd expect in a regular passenger car, with functional elements like a decent glovebox and a pair of cupholders, plus a lidded console and a slot-in wireless phone charger between the front seats.

Boot space is divided between the front and rear of the car. Both storage areas can get quite warm, so not ideal for running your groceries home from the shops. The rear compartment offers the largest and most versatile space, and every time you pop the boot lid you get no choice but to check out the engine, which is actually pretty cool.

Storage for the roof panel can be found at the back too, though with the roof slotted in available space shrinks, but the open-air experience it so worth it.

The focus of a car with this kind of performance should never be the infotainment system, but even still, what you get in the Corvette for the money you pay is a bit of a letdown.

The 8.0-inch screen feels undersized and underfeatured when supercar rivals offer bigger displays with a wider array of performance and track-ready apps and telemetry. There are some performance monitoring screens, along with Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, Bluetooth, and digital radio, but no embedded navigation or online services.

The interface is big and basic, and simple to use on the go.

The digital driver's display is a much more useful space, with a heap of customisable options for driver info, and a choice of layouts between a classic centre tacho or a race-style horizontal tacho with a centralised speedo underneath and space to keep an eye on tyre pressures and fluid temperatures for competition use.

The Chevrolet Corvette range has not been subjected to local crash testing by safety body ANCAP. Similarly, its low volume sales mean that overseas equivalent, Euro NCAP, also lacks crash protection data for this model.

Recognised safety authorities in the US – like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety – also lack assessment data on the C8 Corvette.

The Corvette Z06 comes with a decent list of standard safety equipment. Not enough to give mainstream family SUVs a run for their money, but in the supercar class, driver assist features tend to be a little less important.

You get key equipment like autonomous emergency braking, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, lane-departure warning with lane-keep assist, and blind-spot monitoring. Features tend towards offering warnings rather than intervention, allowing the driver to keep control in most areas.

Passive cruise control is included rather than an adaptive system. A 360-degree camera is fitted, with the option to view individual sections for a more detailed view.

While mainstream brands have nearly all moved to five-year warranties or longer, the Chevrolet Corvette is covered for three years or 100,000km only. A longer warranty would give the Corvette a point of difference in the supercar market where shorter warranty terms are often still the case.

A three-year roadside assist program is also included with the vehicle.

Service intervals are set at 12 months or 12,000km, whichever comes first. GMSV hasn't established a capped-price service program for its range of vehicles, so costs may vary between dealers.

Our regular comparative insurer wasn't able to provide an insurance quote for the Corvette Z06. We'd suggest a specialist insurer would be a better bet for a car like this anyway.

GMSV doesn't publish an official fuel consumption figure in Australia, but based on European specifications (which closely match Australian vehicles) the Z06 is rated to around 16.5 litres per 100 kilometres.

It's not often a car matches its claim, but in my week with the Z06 I saw consumption of 16.6L/100km. Not exactly miserly, but for a car with such blistering performance potential, still quite decent.

The 70-litre fuel tank provides around 420km of range at the consumption I recorded. If you're using your Z06 in a more aggressive manner or hitting the track, expect to fill up more often.

The Corvette Z06 already starts from a strong base. The entry-level Stingray impresses with its sharp roadholding and incredible performance.

That gives the Z06 a fantastic starting point, but dials things up, and then up some more. Most surprisingly, around town, the Corvette Z06 can still be docile and easy to manage. A supercar you can daily drive.

It's a tale of two cars, in a way. If you keep engine revs low, the Z06 is almost subtle, but sweep the tacho needle past 3500rpm and all of a sudden the Corvette feels almost vicious. You won't wait long to get into the upper rev ranges either, with the 5.5-litre engine able to sweep the tacho with almost instant reactivity.

In classic naturally aspirated style, torque isn't immediately available. It builds predictably, and the 595Nm peak is no small number. You've got a wide band of revs to play with, too, to ramp up performance as you desire. With peak power at an incredible 8550rpm – that's a 2100rpm higher rev ceiling than the Corvette Stingray.

In all honesty, buying a Z06 to use solely on the road feels like a waste. The Stingray hits all the performance metrics you could ever wish for on the street. It also sounds better too. The Z06 is sharper, faster, and more muscular in a way that sees it perfectly set up for a life of track work.

Somewhat annoyingly, though, Chevrolet's engineers have still made the low-speed comfort good enough that you can drive it every day. Ride is firm without being taxing, and the adaptive dampers mean you can cycle through former settings when road conditions allow.

Grip is something else again. The balance in the Corvette Z06 goes far beyond what you'd ever be able to explore on public roads. I almost expected the ferocious V8 would be tugging at the rear wheels to overcommit, but firing out of fast bends, the Corvette can feel just a hint playful, but is more planted than I initially expected.

The Z06 tested here was also fitted with the available Z07 Performance Package, which adds carbon-ceramic brakes, a set of serious Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2R tyres, Magneride adjustable dampers, and a carbon-fibre aero package, but doesn't include the carbon wheels that are an additional extra.

The brakes are just about strong enough to separate your face from your skull if you step on them hard enough, but they do deliver their best work with some heat in them. Unlike some high-performance packages, though, these aren't grabby or squealy at low speeds.

The only mismatch for the performance focus was the steering. It felt heavier than expected and required a lot more input. That's probably aimed at high-speed stability, the downside being a heavy, syrupy feel when it comes time to navigate city streets and compact parking garages. Other supercar rivals can feel a lot lighter and more communicative over the front axle.

The biggest letdown by far is the sound. Corvettes fitted with Chevrolet's 6.2-litre V8 have a ferocious burble that is deep and pleasant, and is probably exactly what comes to mind when you imagine a big Amercan V8. The 5.5-litre engine sounds different, and that's no doubt down to its flat-plane design, which leads to a very different aural signature.

Australian-delivered cars also get a European-spec exhaust, which is quieter to comply with noise regulations there, and feels deliberately muffled from the cabin. On the outside, it's still quite loud, but for the driver, the engine sounds mechanical and thrashy, without the lovely precise pitch of old Ferrari flat-plane engines.

The Corvette family tree offers three very close but distinctly different performance options. None are slow. A Stingray will run 0–97km/h (0–60mph) in 2.9 seconds, which is hardly wasting time. The Z06 will trim that down to 2.6 seconds, and perhaps a little oddly, the cheaper E-Ray is quicker at 2.5 seconds.

But it's the engineering package, which already comes from a very competent base, that puts the Z06 on a higher plane. It's a car built for competition with tweaked aerodynamics, track-built engine lubrication, and a major tech upgrade that sees pushrods replaced with a hand-assembled overhead-cam engine. More than just a Corvette with the heat turned up, the Z06 rethinks performance, braking, and suspension to ensure it can stand up to the heat of competition.

And that makes it tricky to recommend. If you're genuinely going to use it at track events around the country, either as a starting point for your own race car or just for kicks, it is well worth the spend. If you just want the sharp styling of a C8 Corvette and like the idea of an occasional fast start away from the traffic lights, then a Stingray or E-Ray is probably all you need, with a better soundtrack to boot.

Kez Casey migrated from behind spare parts counters to writing about cars over ten years ago. Raised by a family of automotive workers, Kez grew up in workshops and panel shops before making the switch to reviews and road tests for The Motor Report, Drive and CarAdvice.

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