2009 Corvette Z06 biTurbo by Geiger Cars First Drive

The Corvette cruises through a sleepy village and there's just the odd glance at this electric green beast skulking past with unburned fuel popping from its quartet of tailpipes with a sound like distant artillery. But then the countryside beckons, so we gently squeeze the throttle in 3rd gear. But not gently enough.

At 3,500 rpm, traction at the rear wheels doesn't just break, it dissolves, along with several hundred dollars of rubber from the massive (and massively expensive) Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 rear tires. The 2009 Corvette Z06 biTurbo by Geiger Cars snaps sideways at 90 mph and tries to wriggle off the road as the engine rpm indicated on the head-up display multiplies crazily.

We lift just a little and the car comes back, and then it's hard on the gas. The car snaps down the road as if propelled by some enormous elastic strap until the next gearchange, the next turbo rush and the next flirtation with disaster.

Did we mention we're driving the Corvette in Germany, not Michigan?

An American Car From Munich
This Corvette runs a razor's edge between the fastest car you'll ever drive and the last car you'll ever drive. It makes the almighty 638-horsepower Corvette ZR1 seem as refined as a Porsche, but also mighty slow. That's kind of what you expect, though, from the 890-hp Corvette Z06 biTurbo by Geiger Cars. Even Karl Geiger calls it "Wild Thing."

You're always reading about guys mashing the throttle to the floor and feeling the kick from the engine. Try that here, and the kick you'll feel will be oncoming traffic plowing into the hood. With 890-hp in a 3,086-pound package, the power-to-weight ratio is something like that of a Bugatti Veyron, only without that boring everyday practicality. With this Corvette, the long lost art of throttle control becomes a daily life-saving necessity.

Even with a feather-light touch on the gas pedal, the rear end of the car jumps out of line as the massive Garrett turbos kick in through 1st, 2nd, 3rd and even 4th gear. As the truly fearsome acceleration takes hold, the tires smoke with each grab of the meaty shift lever. Geiger Cars doesn't even publish acceleration times for Z06 biTurbo, as the car just can't maintain any traction at low speed. Even so, Wild Thing will nail 200 km/h (124 mph) in well under 12 seconds, even with the slideways moments. Meanwhile this Corvette's top speed of 220 mph puts it in the most exclusive company in the world.

As for the noise, well, this Z06 sounds like Armageddon has arrived, as the turbocharged V8's stutter at low rpm hardens into a kind of full-strength industrial roar, while the intermittent chuff and whine of the turbos seem to take residence in your inner ear. Everything is violent, everything is immediate, everything is over the top. You'd have to be a special kind of mental to use this car as a daily driver.

Hot-Rod Engineering From Germany
Geiger Cars — a tuning firm in Munich, Germany — has specialized in American cars and trucks since 1978. Nobody accused the Corvette Z06's 7.0-liter V8 of lacking guts, yet Geiger has bored out the engine to 7.6 liters and fitted new forged pistons, titanium valve springs, sport camshafts and a high-flow air intake with 100mm mass airflow meter. A new fuel-injection system is a necessity to feed this thirsty engine and there's a massive four-pipe exhaust system to get rid the spent gases. A racing-caliber dual-disc clutch joins forces with a carbon-reinforced driveshaft, while diff and driveshafts have all been reinforced.

Which is just as well, when you consider the pile-driving force that is heading through those O-Z Racing Ultraleggera wheels clothed in simply ridiculous 285/30R19 front and 345/25R20 rear Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 tires. Geiger has also done its best to contain the pure speed of this outrageous machine with the suspension, fitting a KW kit with racing-caliber dampers (16-way compression damping), H&R springs that drop the ride height a full 1.2 inches, and front and rear antiroll bars thicker than a bodybuilder's forearms.

The new bodywork is designed to not only improve downforce but also cool the overheated engine bay and the overworked brakes. The only original parts are the doors and rear-quarter panels; the rest is the Geiger GT fiberglass kit (available in the U.S.). Those pronounced hood vents give this Corvette the look of a Dodge Viper, and yet they're still barely enough to compensate for the incredible heat from the engine, which even burned through the spark plug wires in the prototype version of this car.

On the Road
Wild Thing needs all the help it can get to keep it on the ground. Even as we slowly drove through the Munich suburbs near Geiger's facility on Truderingerstrasse, the rear of the car was stepping out at every intersection. Finally we made it into the countryside, where we could let the car run a bit.

Beneath 3,500 rpm, the V8 engine is a pussycat, but as soon as those turbos kick in, this car goes to a whole other level. If you really want to exercise Wild Thing, you'll need not a racetrack but an airfield. The peak power of 890 hp comes at 6,100 rpm, but there's a simply stupid 693 pound-feet of torque that's available at 4,500 rpm.

If a car can go sideways in a straight line it deserves ultimate respect in the bends. And so anything else but a super slow-in and fast-out approach to the corners with Wild Thing could be punished by instant death. In our short test run there was no way to feel for the limit, and full opposite lock is no longer an option, as the wide tires sit so close to the fenders.

As a result, we were riding the StopTech brakes like white on rice on the approach to any bend. Fortunately there's plenty of braking power, with six-piston calipers working on 15-inch rotors in the front while four-piston calipers grab 14-inch rotors in the back. With so much braking power and so much contact patch from the tires to match, they're more than capable of bringing us back to reality from epic speeds. Even these brakes will wilt under sustained abuse, though, so Geiger will install the carbon-ceramic brakes of a Corvette ZR1 for those with an extra $35,000 to spend.

Get Stupid With Speed
So this, then, is not an everyday sports car anymore, but that was never the point of the exercise. The idea was to create a bright green rocket that would provide all the fun and games anyone can handle on a Sunday afternoon. And with the 2009 Corvette Z06 biTurbo by Geiger Cars priced at about $210,000, Karl Geiger has taken the traditional American principles of bang for your buck to the level of nuclear fission. Sure, it's not much different than a stock Z06 on the inside of the cabin, but when you're going this fast, who the hell cares?

Nothing this side of the Bugatti Veyron feels faster than Wild Thing, and nothing on this Earth feels quite so explosive. Geiger built the Corvette Z06 biTurbo as an engineering exercise, just to show what's possible. But there are people in this world crazy enough to buy the Wild Thing, or perhaps the Camaro with the supercharged ZR1 engine that Geiger is about to start working on.

The manufacturer provided Edmunds this vehicle for the purposes of evaluation.