Dear Future: We're really, really sorry. Kinda got carried away, what with all the petroleum and all. You're probably wishing that we had saved a few barrels of oil for you, for airline travel and making fertilizer. And those little plastic swim fins would come in handy, now that Greenland has melted.
I know, "sorry" doesn't feed the bulldog. What's that? You've eaten your bulldog? OK, you're just making this harder.
The problem with petroleum, you see, is that it's so utterly intoxicating, so rapturously explosive, such a giddy kick to the Newtonian groin. A gallon of gasoline represents about 125,000 BTUs of thermo-chemical energy and weighs a mere 6 pounds. To match the energy of a single gallon of gas, our most advanced lithium battery has to weigh between 30 and 40 pounds and be hooked up to a wind turbine for, like, ever.
Gasoline is the light, sweet liquor of the gods, the glowing blood throbbing in Odin's temples. . . .
Oh, right, sorry.
If gas is our combustible heroin, cars like the 2009 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 are our big needles. This 638-hp, 205-mph, $105,000 affront to all that is good and decent and respectable, this angry strake of carbon fiber and aluminum turns gasoline directly into moments of teary bliss. Let me tell you, it's one thing to mouth the pieties of alternatively fueled transportation -- hybrids, diesels, electrics. It's quite another to feel the arch-adrenaline of dinosaur-fueled horsepower and say, "Never again."
Some may wonder why badly bleeding General Motors would invest precious development dollars turning the already quite mental Corvette Z06 into this necromantic hypercar. Isn't the electric Volt the company's salvation?
Maybe. But because the ZR1 builds on the Corvette program -- the aluminum-and-balsa chassis is the same; the supercharged LS9 is a titanium-rod-and-crank version of the base pushrod V8 -- it represents a relatively small marketing outlay. And marketing is what it is. This car has appeared on every magazine cover from Motor Trend to Bass Masters Quarterly.
Having to get around in wooden, orphan-drawn carts, Future, it might be hard for you to appreciate what it's like to drive such a car. To begin with, in terms of comfort and usability, the ZR1 crushes comparable hypercars such as the Lamborghini Murcielago, the Porsche 911 GT2 and the Ferrari 599. To put four sets of golf clubs in those cars, as you can in the Corvette, you'd have to use a crowbar and a Sawz-All.
