COLOSSUS OF ROADS

GREAT CARS ARE BUILT IN FACTORIES, BUT THEIR SOULS ARE FOUND ON THE OPEN ROAD. FOUR DEVELOPMENT ENGINEERS REVEAL THE ROADS THAT HELPED CREATE SOME OF OUR FAVORITE VEHICLES.

- LAWRENCE ULR ICH, MIKE DUFF, MIKE DUFF

THE Z06 REVISITS ROADS THAT BIRTHED IT 

HISTORY’S ULTIMATE CORVETTE GETS BORN AGAIN.

How did the Corvette become the new Corvette Z06, Chevrolet's most accomplished sports car, the one I imagine racing back in time to 1953 to blow creator Zora Arkus-Duntov's mind?

Stick a map pin-red, naturally-in Detroit and a second in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where General Motors has built more than 1.1 million Vettes since 1981. Even fanatics wouldn't know to stick a third pin in Julian, California, population 1332.

It's an apple-growing, former gold-mining town between the Volcan and Cuyamaca Mountains, barely an hour east of San Diego.

It's here that I'm holding on, desert wildflowers ablur, as Aaron Link hangs a left off Route 78 and ascends Yaqui Pass Road in the mid-engine Z06.

"The base Stingray isn't as composed," Link says, as the Z06 leeches onto pavement in an Oscar-level bid for Best Understatement.

Link is among the hottest GM hotshoes, a former Corvette lead development engineer who is now global vehicle performance manager. With multifarious roads and shifting microclimates, Julian and its environs have become GM's de facto winter home for developing cars like the Z06.

Computer simulations have erased some tuning trial and error. GM's Milford Proving Ground in suburban Detroit envelops 140 miles of roads and one notoriously torturous road course. But there will never be a substitute for a genuine dotted line.

"There are real-world situations and surfaces we have to see to put the final five percent on the car," Link says. "The beauty is, within an hour's radius of Julian, there are limitless roads to choose from."