For most of the past 47 years, Corvettes have not only been America's Sports Car, but America's only sports car. There was a certain degree of rivalry from 1955-57 when Ford's Thunderbird was a two-seater. Then the T-Bird bloated up into a four-place caricature of what it once was. In the early and mid-'60s, Carroll Shelby's Cobras, AC/Ford hybrids, gave the Corvettes a real run for the money on race tracks around the world but not in sales. Cobras became extinct when the Feds started requiring minimal safety and emissions equipment, while Corvettes evolved with the times. Vettes reigned supreme until
Dodge stunned the world when the Viper went into production in 1992. Dodge's snake was (and still is) primitive, uncivilized, and bloody expensive compared to a Corvette but, thanks to its brutish, truck-based 8-liter (488 cubic inches) V10, with 450 hp and 490 lb-ft of torque, it was fast. Damned fast, faster than even a ZR-1.
The situation hasn't changed since '92. C5s are far better cars than Vipers in every respect except acceleration and top speed. Out in the real world, a Viper is a full second quicker and 10 mph faster than a six-speed C5 in the quarter mile. There's not a wide a disparity in top speeds-figure on a realistic 165 or so for a C5 vs. around 175 for the Dodge-and in the USA the importance of top speed ranks way below raw acceleration. But it's no contest when it comes down to, shall we say, non-sanctioned acceleration contests on public thoroughfares.
What "The General" hasn't done is give us more inches in the marvelous LS1. No matter how good the engine may be, it's impossible for 5.7 liters (346 cubic inches) to face off against a mountain motor with over 41 percent more displacement. Thanks to American ingenuity, there are, however, ways to overcome the deficit: strokers (modified or custom crankshafts with appropriately longer connecting rods) to boost the displacement, various bolt-ons and upgrades like ported heads to boost the output from what cubes the LS1 has, nitrous oxide injection, and various forms of forced induction, i.e. turbochargers and superchargers.
A"stroker" installation is a major undertaking, requiring removal and complete teardown of the engine, followed by rebuilding it with the new reciprocating assembly (the crank, rods, and pistons). And to take maximum advantage of the extra inches, as well as the fact that the engine's going to be apart, ported heads, a hotter cam, plus induction and exhaust enhancements should be seriously considered. We're talking about cubic dollars to gain cubic inches. The gains will be fairly impressive: a "stroker" with the upgrades we've outlined above should produce at least 425-450 hp, maybe more. A "top end" only build-up, i.e. heads, cam, headers and exhaust plus induction bolt-ons can bump a stock displacement LS1 into the 425-plus horsepower range, still a little short of the horsepower of a stock Viper, and way down on torque.
Nitrous can give some very impressive gains in both torque and horsepower (at least 100 in each category), and a nitrous system costs substantially less than any other "power adder." The downside of "squeeze" is that it's an all or nothing power booster; you activate it by going wide-open throttle when the system is already armed and you get a huge, sudden blast of extra power. There's no part throttle extra power, and when the bottle goes dry, you gotta get it refilled.
Forced induction is my personal favorite. Supercharging has been around for at least seven decades, on American legends like the Duesenberg SJs and "coffin-nose" Cords. Turbochargers, which are basically exhaust-gas-driven centrifugal superchargers, are what made the Porsche 930 Turbos and Buick Grand Nationals so hellaciously fast.