2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Coupe with ZTK Performance Package.
DETROIT — General Motors’ The newest Chevrolet Corvette will be the most powerful version of the American sports car ever built — and it’s not even close.
The Detroit automaker said Thursday that the 2025 Chevy Corvette ZR1 will be powered by a twin-turbocharged 5.5-liter V8 engine capable of more than 1,000 horsepower — a first for the Corvette — and 828 foot-pounds of torque, placing the in the supercars classes that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“This thing pulls like a freight train,” Tadge Juechter, Corvette’s executive chief engineer since 2006, said during a media event. “We expect this car to be essentially the fastest car we’ve ever built by a wide margin.”
The previous most powerful Corvette was GM’s latest ZR1 for the 2019 model year. It produced 755 horsepower and 715 foot-pounds of torque with a turbocharged 6.2-liter V8 engine.
2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Coupe with ZTK Performance Package.
GM
Juechter said the new ZR1 will “comfortably” have a top speed higher than the previous Corvette’s top speed of 212 mph.
GM said pricing for the 2025 Corvette ZR1, including an additional “ZTK” performance package, will be released closer to when the vehicle goes into production next year. The 2019 Corvette ZR1 started at $121,000.
The ZR1 joins what GM calls the “Corvette family,” including the “everyman’s sports car” Corvette Stingray, which starts at about $70,000. the E-Ray hybrid; and the Z06 track car worth about $112,000.
“We’re happy with the way it’s going. This is the next step in this whole approach,” said Brad Franz, director of Chevy car and crossover marketing.
GM previously confirmed an all-electric Corvette, but hasn’t given a timeline. A Corvette SUV has also been under consideration for several years. Franz declined to comment on either car.
2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Coupe with ZTK Performance Package (left) and 2025 Chevrolet ZR1.
Wall Street analysts said GM could make better use of the Corvette brand by expanding models and, to some extent, sales. In late 2019, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said a sub-brand Corvette could be worth between $7 billion and $12 billion.
Chevrolet Corvette sales totaled around 34,500 vehicles for each of the last two years. In 2019, the automaker redefined the iconic sports car, replacing the front-engine design with a mid-engine design to increase performance and handling.
Models like the ZR1 are low-volume vehicles designed to attract brand buzz and lure drivers to cheaper Corvettes.
“The ZR1 is the top of the line. It’s the halo vehicle. It’s going to draw tons of attention to the car and really help sell the other models,” Juechter said. “It’s part of the ongoing business strategy to keep the product relevant for a relatively long life cycle.”
2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1
GM
Other performance models have helped raise the Corvette’s average transaction price to around $106,000.
Franz said the price is expected to continue to rise with the introduction of the ZR1 and increased sales of the track-focused Z06, whose average buyer has a household income of $311,000.
Additional sales of the hybrid Corvette, starting at around $105,000, will also help boost Corvette revenue. GM plans to increase production of the E-Ray to 10 percent of total production capacity from current levels of 2 percent to 3 percent currently, Franz said.
The output reduction effect also helped keep the only plant producing the Corvette in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on two shifts as of 2019.