[1]Corvettes have always been a favorite with the tuning community. Dating back to the fifties when the small-block powered Corvette first hit the streets, tuners have been tweaking and extracting more performance from the Corvette like it was going out of style. The trend continued through the ’60s with “Dyno” Don Nicholson and Ronnie Sox’s tuning and Joel Rosen’s Motion Performance big-blocks.
[2]The Gen-V LT1: The future is unknown, but promising with this powerplant, and tuner shops like Hennessey Performance are already getting ready to void warranties!
Fast forward to the ’80s, ’90s, and all the way up to today, and cars modified by Callaway [3], Lingenfelter [4], Mallett [5], Guldstrand [6], LG Motorsports [7], and others continue to raise the benchmark for late-model Corvette performance.
The C7 isn’t even out yet – heck, the LT1 powering it isn’t even available yet. But the horsepower wizards at Hennessey Performance [8] have already managed to announce supercharger and twin turbo kits capable of producing as much as 1,000 HP from the new-fangled Corvette.
Since it’s unlikely that they’ve gotten their hands on an actual production-spec Gen V small block engine to play with, we’re assuming that Hennessey is doing a little speculation here on what they’ll be able to achieve once the new Corvette is on the road.
Some of the bolt-on performance options include a cold air induction system, cat-back exhausts, stainless steel long-tube headers, Brembo [9] brake package, wheels and tire upgrades, suspension systems, and much more.
So even though that the current LS-powered C6 is on the way out, you can guarantee that tuner Corvettes will still continue to be developed with the LT1-powered C7 Stingray.