At last June’s 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, the fastest race car that General Motors Co. has ever built — the ferocious, winged Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh — hit a top speed of 209 mph.

That’s peanuts.

The new, 2025 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 production car will hit, ahem, 233. Chevy announced the top speed number for the ZR1 this week, the latest, mind-boggling spec to come from the most capable production vehicle the brand has ever made. And in some specs, the fastest vehicle it has made, period.

The rear-wheel-drive, mid-engine ZR1 also sports the twin-turbocharged, 5.5-liter LT7 engine — the most powerful V-8 the brand has produced at 1,064 horsepower. The top speed is the highest of any American-made car and is the fastest of any production car under $1 million. And just to add icing to the cake, the record was set by General Motors President Mark Reuss in a test in Papenburg, Germany.

“Setting the top-speed record in the Corvette ZR1 is a true triumph for Corvette and for Chevrolet, and also an exhilarating, surreal experience for me personally,” said Reuss, a race-licensed driver, who hit the record at redline RPM in sixth gear. “With the current generation’s switch to mid-engine, we knew the outstanding performance and balance made this a real possibility.”

The Corvette team set the record at the banked, 7.6-mile Papenberg test track which features 50-degree banked turns — 19 degrees steeper than the famed Daytona International Speedway. To reduce drag for the top-speed run, Chevy brought a pair of ZR1s outfitted with the smaller of two spoilers available and the shorter front wicker bill. The ZR1 rode on the supercar’s standard suspension with aluminum wheels and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires. Engineers utilized a so-called Top Speed Mode for use exclusively on a closed course to adjust chassis control systems for maximum speed.

Reuss made two, opposite-direction passes on the track — hitting of 233 MPH on the first lap and 233.5 MPH on the second (official top-speed records require the average of two runs in opposite directions to account for wind).

“He was doing 222 miles per hour in the banking,” said ZR1 lead development engineer Chris Barber. At that velocity, the all-new ZR1 had already beaten the Corvette top-speed record by 10 mph. Then Reuss hit the 2.5-mile straightaway and put his foot to the floor.

“The fact that we chose (this track) makes it clear — we’re not fooling around with this car,” said Aaron Link, Global Vehicle Performance Manager. “LT7 is basically unhinged. It delivers this power in an obscene way in how well it puts the speed down and how comfortable the car is to drive. What a prideful moment for Corvette.”

The LT7’s stratospheric 1,064 horsepower makes it the first 'Vette to hit quadruple digits. The number puts the mid-engine sportscar in elite, million-dollar-plus hypercar territory along with European rocket ships like the 1,063-horsepower Mercedes-AMG One and 1,160-horse Aston Martin Valkyrie. Yet the Corvette will cost one-tenth of these exotics at an estimated $150,000 when it goes on sale later this year.

ZR1 essentially takes the screaming, 8,000-RPM, 670-horsepower LT6 engine found in the Z06 — the fastest, normally-aspirated Corvette ever made — and increases output by strapping twin turbochargers on its back. ZR1 puts its 828 pound-feet of torque to the ground with the same 8-speed transmission and 12-inch, rear-wheel-tire setup as Z06.

Expect more eye-popping numbers like 0-60 MPH and quarter-mile times as the ZR1 approaches production.

“I’ve never obviously gone that fast,” said Reuss afterward. “But you can’t do it without confidence. Confidence comes from all the people that are to prepare the car, but also the engineers that engineer it.”

You’ll know the ZR1 by the deep air extractor in the front hood (similar to that found on the C8.R race car that competes in global GT3 series) and by its rear split window — an homage to the iconic 1963 Corvette. In order to bring the ZR1 to a stop from its record-braking speeds, the supercar comes with 15.7-inch carbon ceramic brakes in front, 15.4-inch in back.

The ZR1 is the third performance variant of the mid-engine C8 supercar which debuted as a 2020 model with a so-called LT2 engine — a 495-horsepower, normally-aspirated, 6.2-liter, push-rod V-8.

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