By Chris Woodyard, USA Today - Guy Fieri, host of Diners, Drive Ins and Dives, shows off his "cooked up" Chevrolet Corvette C6 special edition during the Chevrolet Media Reception at the SEMA convention in Las Vegas.
When it comes to finding a celebrity to help out in a pinch, General Motors is increasingly calling on Guy Fieri, host of Diners, Drive Ins and Dives on the Food Channel.
The blonde, spiky-haired, wisecracking Fieri showed up this week in Las Vegas, where he showed off the "cooked up" Chevrolet Corvette C6 special edition. He was there as a kickoff for the SEMA trade show, the big aftermarket parts show for the auto industry.
The Corvette will be auctioned off for charity in January.
Fieri loves cars in general and the vintage Chevrolet Camaro he drives on his TV show in particular. He showed up before to help out GM last summer to pace the Indianapolis 500 in a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. And he brought two of his personal Camaros to Detroit in August for the Woodward Dream Cruise, the annual festival of vintage cars that rolls down one of the Motor City's major boulevards.
Fieri isn't all about Chevrolets. Drive On readers will remember the trauma he suffered a year ago when his Lamborghini was stolen from a San Francisco dealership. It disappeared for months before recovered from a Marin County storage facility.
By Michael Harley, Autoblog.com - After ripping around in the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 supercar and enjoying every tire-shredding moment, we were worried that the Corvette Grand Sport Coupe, its lesser sibling, would be a letdown. We were very wrong. Chevrolet has made sure its Corvette Grand Sport deliberately lacks the supercharger and bad-boy displacement of its big brothers, but its masterfully-tuned 6.2-litre V8 is nothing to laugh at, boasting 430 horsepower and 424 pound-feet of torque.
- Power is more than abundant, and the soundtrack sent chills down our hardened spines (for best results, remove the exhaust flapper fuse like we did)
- Thanks to a close-ratio six-speed manual transmission (a6AT is optional) and a limited-slip differential, this two-door will blast to 60 mph (96 km/h) in about four seconds flat. Top speed is fast enough to lift a commercial jetliner off the ground
- Our coupe, a 4LT model, arrived decked out in Arctic White paint with 60th Anniversary Design and 60th Anniversary Stripe packages. Some may consider the packages a bit gaudy, but it garnered more than a few compliments from passer-bys.
- The Corvette's cabin might be woefully dated, but our car's diamond-blue leather upholstery helped this C6's cabin look about as good as we've ever seen it
- Taming a big American V8 isn't easy, but Chevrolet has done an excellent job. Upgraded with GM's Active Handling, unique body components and a higher, wider rear spoiler, our car also featured the Z52 Performance Package (bundled with a track-ready dry-sump oil system, differential cooler, sticky Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar tires and larger cross-drilled brakes)
- While the Grand Sport starts at $67,605, our as-tested price, including the must-have Magnetic Selective Ride Control (magnetorheological shocks) and some other options, was about $73,150
- Despite being down a couple of hundred horsepower, we found the Grand Sport Coupe slightly more enjoyable than the ZR1 on public roads -- its power is simply more useable. We could more easily put our foot to the floor coming out of the corners without worrying about kissing a guardrail or an immobile tree. The steering is razor-sharp, and the brakes and suspension were easily up to everything we could throw at them
- For maximum pleasure, enjoy the 2013 Corvette Grand Sport Coupe sans roof panel and with all the windows down. We did, often
