“If you’re going to engage in an endeavor like this,” adds Tom Peters, “you need that noticeable transition or contrast. You know a customer is going to expect it.” As design director for performance cars at General Motors, Peters shouldered much of the responsibility for the other half of the ZR1’s story: aerodynamics. Aside from the rear wing and different wheels, the Z06 and ZR1 are identical aft of the A-pillars. Forward of them, no bodywork is shared, and engineers crammed an additional four heat exchangers into the nose. Each outboard nostril contains a new radiator and intercooler. The two intercooler bricks underhood are enlarged to twice the size of the LT4’s. The ZR1’s larger blower and additional coolers add some 140 pounds to the Z06’s curb weight, most of it concentrated in the nose. A chief collaborator on the ZR1’s styling was air. Maximizing airflow through all those exchangers meant extensive wind-tunnel development, using both scale models and full-size cars in a rolling-road wind tunnel. “We see aerodynamics as an opportunity to make the car more unique, more pure and genuine,” Peters says. “To me, that’s universal truth, and that’s design.”
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