The people at Motor Trend strapped down the new mid-engine Corvette to a chassis dyno and got some interesting results. Specifically, the calculated crank power they achieved was 656 hp and 606 lb-ft of torque. That is significantly more than the 495 hp and 470 lb-ft of torque that Chevy claims for the Corvette. Motor Trend did several runs, in different gears and at different engine temperatures. They even strapped down a different vehicle to ensure that the dyno wasn’t erroneous. It wasn’t.
It’s goes deeper than just the dyno numbers. The 0-60 mph acceleration takes 2.8 seconds. The quarter mile comes in at 11.1 seconds at 123.2 mph. Those are very fast numbers for a vehicle that weights between 3,535 and 3,637 pounds. Plugging into all into an old trusty-ish trap-speed-horsepower calculator, at 3,535 pounds we get 513 horsepower. At 3,637 pounds we get 528 horsepower. But let’s add a conservative 200 pounds for a suited/helmeted driver and fuel and we get 557 horsepower. This calculation takes only the quarter mile trap speed into consideration, so initial traction issues don’t really impact it. It’s highly unscientific but done years, the results yield higher numbers than Chevrolet’s but lower than MT’s dyno.
Chevrolet says that the numbers are lower due to the SAE horsepower certification process during which a ton of heat soak occurs. That should still raise some eyebrows as the difference between 656 and 495 horsepower is still very substantial.
So what the hell is going on here? Why is Chevy claiming much lower horsepower than it actually is? Are perhaps the first few new cars ringers? Was the SAE tested car just underpowered?
I am scratching my head because I don’t know. While there are environmental and physical testing differences, it should be to less than than five percent. GM would not make media ringer cars this day and age as many customer vehicles will undoubtedly be dynoed soon enough. The SAE certification has historically shown lower power numbers, but not by this factor. Could the MT dyno testing be off that much?
What ever the case, the thing to take away from all this is that the new mid-engine Corvette is damn fast and there is clearly room for more performance to be gained from this initial setup.
Photo: Motor Trend
UPDATE: Jason Cammisa has an interesting perspective on this:
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