This C8 Corvette Was Punished Like A Work Truck And It Went Horribly Wrong
Chevrolet’s 670-hp Corvette Z06 is the closest thing the brand sells to a supercar, yet one owner put it through a durability test built for a farm truck, with a base Silverado 1500 parked alongside, with some other YouTuber shenanigans, of course. Nearly everything done to the Corvette was also meant for the pickup.
The C8 cost around $100,000, and it took a beating before testing even started, plowing through a gate, construction barricades, and fire hoses on the driveway.
Most of the car held up better than expected, including its soaked electronics. The real trouble came from one everyday job that a Silverado handles without any fuss.
670 HP Supercar Versus 310 HP Work Truck
The whole video runs on the joke that the C8 is secretly a pickup, since it has a frunk up front, a rear storage area that gets called a truck bed, a pickup-style back window, and a hitch. The host even jokes that Chevy wanted to build a mid-engine supercar but couldn’t fully commit, because it’s a truck company at heart.
The Corvette’s 5.5-liter LT6 is a flat-plane crank V8 that makes 670 hp at 8,400 rpm and 460 lb-ft at 6,300 rpm, and Chevy quotes a 0-60 mph time of as little as 2.6 seconds. The base Silverado 1500 uses a 2.7-liter TurboMax four-cylinder with 310 hp and 430 lb-ft, and the entry-level WT trim starts at $36,900.
As expected, the Corvette walked away from the Silverado in both a drag race and a rolling race, though both vehicles were smoking by the end. An indoor dyno run then reportedly showed 248 on the speed display, a number that doesn’t line up with reality, since Chevy rates the Z06 at a 195 mph top speed with the Z07 package.
WhistlinDiesel Subjected This C8 To A Car Wash, A Crane, And 30 Door Slams
The man behind the test is Cody Detwiler, the Nashville-based YouTuber better known as WhistlinDiesel, known for destroying vehicles and modifying trucks. The car is a 2023 Corvette Z06, and the video is the first in his C8 durability series.
With a storm rolling in, he drove the Corvette on the highway with its roof panel off, then sent it through an automatic car wash while still topless. The key ended up in standing water, but the electronics kept working.
To help it dry, the crew hung the car by its tow hitch with the nose pointing at the ground, then tried to climb it. It came down with basically no damage.
In the manhandling test, the side mirror lens popped off by hand, but the mirror housing held his full weight. The driver’s door survived 30 hard slams before he forced it backward, bending the hinges and cracking the fiberglass, though it still latched.
The frunk lid, damaged in an earlier video, came off its hinges. Inside, he ripped out the drive-mode dial, which fell into the console, and griped about the climate buttons and the triple honk for a key left inside. He said the cabin felt more Tahoe than supercar, but the Corvette was still holding up better than expected.
Where The Corvette Finally Started To Throw In The Towel
For the last test, a horse trailer went on the Corvette’s welded-on hitch to pick up a Clydesdale, which the crew jokingly claimed weighs 9,000 lbs. Under the trailer’s tongue weight, the rear bumper got pushed in and the back of the car visibly started to bend, with the crew blaming the aluminum frame. Testing stopped once the hitch itself began tearing in half.
GM’s own owner’s manual says the C8 is neither designed nor intended to tow a trailer, so the result isn’t a total shock. A base Silverado 1500 with the 2.7-liter TurboMax, by comparison, is rated to tow up to 9,500 lbs when properly equipped.
The damage is also harder to fix than it looks, because GM restricts most of the C8’s structural frame parts to certified collision repair shops. WhistlinDiesel says he stopped early because he needs at least two videos out of the $100,000 car to pay for it, which leaves a big question over what Part 2 will ask a Corvette with a bent rear end to do.
Sources: WhistlinDiesel via YouTube
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