The Chevy Corvette ZR1’s Twin Turbos Are the Largest Ever Fitted to a Production Car

I saw the new Chevy Corvette ZR1 in person back in June, and I’m still not over it. Never before in my nearly eight years of doing this job have I been gobsmacked by a car’s stat sheet like I was with this thing. The power from the boosted 5.5-liter flat-plane crank V8 is crazy: 1,064 ponies at 7,000 rpm and 828 lb-ft of torque at 6,000 rpm. We already knew that was thanks in part to the car’s 76-millimeter BorgWarner twin turbos, but I didn’t know until now that these are the largest twin turbos ever fitted to a production car.

That’s according to BorgWarner itself, which put out a press release last week announcing its contract with Chevy is properly secured. The OEM specifies that each dual ball-bearing turbo has a 76mm forged milled compressor wheel with a ported shroud and a 67mm turbine wheel inside a mono scroll housing for maximum efficiency. That’s a lot of tech jargon, but the takeaway is this: They’re mighty impressive, and they were designed specifically for the ZR1. BorgWarner even adorned each one with Gemini rockets as a nod to the “Gemini twin” LT6 and LT7 engines.

You may have heard of bigger turbos in the aftermarket—some of those measure 100mm or more—but we’re talking specifically about factory twin (as in, not single) turbo cars here. BorgWarner itself manufactures larger turbos than what Chevy is putting in the ZR1, but this is an entirely different ballgame. These BorgWarner 7667s communicate with the Corvette’s computers, relaying blade pass speed via a sensor so the car can accurately monitor how quickly the compressor wheel is spinning. Integrated systems like this are a lot more complex than what you can buy off the shelf, and the parts also have to be built to the car company’s durability standards.

The entire engine package has been eight generations in the making, as LT7 assistant chief engineer Dustin Gardner told me at the car’s reveal. It was rumored long before the C8 that the Corvette would eventually go mid-engined, and because of the width these two turbos add to the already-wide flat-plane crank V8, a performance machine like this couldn’t happen until now.

“The C8 architecture was there to enable this, right?” Gardner explained. “The LT6, just being tall, could never go in the front and the LT7, being so wide… and with this much power and torque, you need a chassis like this to be able to use it. You put 1,000 hp in a front-engined car and you’re not going to be able to use it.”

These whirlers are larger than you’ll find on some of the world’s most expensive cars, too. The Koenigsegg Jesko also runs a twin-turbo V8, but the Corvette’s blowers are bigger. That’s kind of always been the Corvette’s thing, after all—matching or outdoing the Europeans for a lot less money. And while Chevy hasn’t announced pricing for the ZR1, you can bet it’ll be a whole lot cheaper than the seven-figure hypercars it competes with on the Nürburgring.

Just some good ol’ boys, never meanin’ no harm…

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