Chevy Just Unveiled a New Corvette With 1,250 Horsepower

Since its 1953 debut at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, the Corvette was known as America’s sports car. In 2019, the mid-engine C8 Corvette staked a claim on supercar territory. For 2025, the 1,064-horsepower ZR1 began trouncing European competition, backed by a thundering Detroit V-8 soundtrack. 

Still not enough. Chevrolet bills the 2026 ZR1X as “America’s Hypercar,” with no hyperbole required. With an otherworldly 1,250 hybrid horsepower and all-wheel-drive, the ZR1X underscores the ongoing revolution at the highest ranks of performance cars: Adopt an electrified powertrain, or watch your car get brushed aside by the competition, in both acceleration and dynamic handling. 

The ZR1X takes the ZR1’s 1,064-horsepower, 5.5-liter V-8, and raises it with an electrified front axle and lithium-ion battery pack, an upgraded version of the system in the controversial Corvette E-Ray. Joining the four-digit horsepower club, once the exclusive preserve of cars like the Bugatti Veyron, casts the Corvette’s targets in a whole new light: No longer garden-variety Porsches or even hopped-up Mustangs, but seven-figure models like the $2.1 million McLaren W1, $2.7-million Mercedes-AMG One, and a $3.9-million Ferrari F80. Most improbably, considering the production-car lap records the ZR1 is setting on storied circuits, it’s suddenly those exotic rivals that must prove they are as fast as these range-topping Corvettes, not the other way around. 

Corvette engineers arranged my ZR1X introduction in May, on a hotel rooftop in Austin, just hours after a scintillating day of ZR1 laps at Circuit of the Americas. That included a ZR1X coupe whose optional, soaring rear wing served as a carbon-fiber billboard for the car as the pinnacle of American track performance. 

Remarkably, both ZR1 models — offered as a coupe or convertible — boast more horsepower than the Formula One cars that fill the grandstands at COTA. For the ZR1X, electrification is the latest cheat code, sending a jolt of 186 hp and 145 lb-ft through its front axle. That’s fed by a 1.9 kilowatt-hour battery tucked into the car’s cabin tunnel. Versus the E-Ray, engineers squeezed decisively more energy from that pouch-style battery, eliciting 26 more horsepower and 20 additional pound-feet of torque from its electric motor.

Powering the Corvette’s front wheels helps relieve enormous stress on gasoline-driven rear wheels, helping them deliver more efficient, controllable power to pavement. History’s quickest Corvette can scorch 60 mph in less than two seconds, likely faster than either a Tesla Model S Plaid or Lucid Air Sapphire. From that point, it’s game over: A quarter-mile is dispatched in less than 9 seconds at well over 150 mph. This homegrown hypercar can maintain a ridiculous 1.3 g’s of longitudinal acceleration through the entirety of first and second gears. And despite the additional weight of its hybrid system, for a curb weight above 4,000 pounds, the ZR1X can match the 233-mph top speed of the ZR1. 

That electrified front axle is about more than straight-line heroics. It’s designed to help the Corvette settle into corners, using regenerative braking, and claw out again with supernatural force. Optional, track-centric Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires provide the grip. Front wheels can lend a discreet helping hand at speeds up to 160 mph before they disconnect, versus 150 mph on the E-Ray. A new PTM Pro system lets daring pilots shut off traction and stability control, but still keep launch control and torque-vectoring functions active.

Unlike a typical EV battery, designed to maximize range, the ZR1X’s petite battery is more like a hybrid race car’s: It’s all about absorbing and releasing energy at hyper-fast speeds. There’s no need to plug in. And the ZR1X can amp up regenerative braking to fully recharge that battery in just a few minutes or miles of normal street driving. 

Move to the track, and this Corvette integrates intelligent strategies to ensure that the electric boost doesn’t run dry. A “Charge +” button allows extended lapping with AWD contributions over a full tank of fuel. The ZR1X’s appetite for gasoline may be more pressing: This monster can slurp two gallons of premium unleaded per minute at peak power. 

A “push-to-pass” button unlocks every joule and electron of combined force for as long as a driver keeps a foot to the floor. It’s designed for tracks, but should work just as effectively at stoplights. A Qualifying Mode maximizes powertrain thrust to set personal bests on track.  

See Also

The Final Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing Heads to Auction

To keep that apocalyptic power in check, the ZR1X introduces the largest, most powerful brakes in General Motors’ history. Standard carbon-ceramic brakes feature 16.5-inch rotors both front and rear, with fronts gripped by 10-piston calipers. For 2026, the standard ZR1 will offer those brakes as an option. 

Perched on its Austin rooftop, the ZR1X appears virtually identical to its rear-drive sibling. From its gulping air intakes to an angry quartet of exhaust outlets, this sharp-angled American fighter is a testament to pure aerodynamic function, not romantic Italian curves. But it’s an attention-getter nonetheless. Slip inside, however, and the ZR1X presses a major advantage over the standard ZR1, adopting the redesigned interior of all 2026 Corvettes. More sophisticated and ergonomically sound, the cabin features enlarged screens, a 6.6-inch auxiliary driver’s screen, and a smartly reworked console with a less cumbersome drive mode controller. The C8’s former cantilevered “waterfall” of switches between driver and passenger — an awkward, boy-racer element whose idea proved better than the execution — is replaced by a simple passenger grab handle. 

A bit surprisingly, the 2026 ZR1X will reach showrooms as quickly as it can take a checkered flag. Chevrolet expects to begin production in Bowling Green, Ky., before year’s end. That creates an unexpected conundrum for Corvette fans, who must now decide between a potentially “purer” rear-drive ZR1, or an even more powerful AWD version that promises greater driver confidence and control, including in all-weather conditions. 

For certain Corvette fans, who have voiced dismay or outright displeasure over the Corvette’s electric evolution, that choice may be easy. Others will take the sage advice of Tadge Juechter, the Corvette’s recently retired chief engineer: Electricity can improve even the greatest performance cars, and is something to embrace, not fear.  

The ZR1X will look to advance that argument, one race and one customer at a time. 

Click here for more photos of the 2026 Chevy Corvette ZR1X.