Dad's new toy

Here's a couple a picture's of Dad's Corvette LT4.... (FINALLY)

Despite this car being mint (to the human eye at least) Dad thinks he could still spend money on it. I'm hoping the first investment will be on some free flowing exhaust pipes with smaller silencers and a de-cat pipe if I had my way. We'll be visiting Hayward & Scott where I got my exhaust from for the 22B, on the 25th of this month to discuss the options. It sounds lovely and smooth and 'waffley' although there is potential for a more full-on V8 rumble.

It's fitted with the ZR1 slightly deep dished 5 spoke alloys. The 5.7 litre small block chevy engine produces 330bhp and this much torque.....

^ I think about torque quite a lot - but this best represents the vette's torque better than ^ any articulate and carefully worded description

It's absolutely insane, it has 6 gears and the famous quote is that it'll cruise at 50 mph in the top 5 gears. It'll do 0-60 in 4.7 seconds - which is exactly the same as the 22B. Because of the capacity of the engine it really doesn't need to rev that high to really perform. As a consequence of this I found myself shifting up way too early at about 4 of 5k rpm - as the gears are so long that it feels unnatural not to shift for such a long period of time - so you do just out of habbit..... and guess what? It just keeps on pulling, and really pulling.

The First time we test drove it, Dad changed down at about 60mph, floored it and the rear snaked all of the road as it broke traction (with the traction control on!). Since then I've sat in the passenger seat (on the wrong side of the car - LHD) on demos by Dad as he controllably snaked up the road at high speed - in 3rd gear!

Ok now for the handling: This is where everyone expects me to say how bad it is. But it really doesn't deserve it's bad reputation. Neither of us are aware of what it's like near the limit, but it's got really good road holding and stability through the bends and the round abouts we've been round so far - I'll have to report back with more on this when I get to play more on dry roads.