Pole Position

January 3rd 2025 Newsletter Archives

Here at General Motors, we offer cars, trucks, and SUVs for every driver – suburban families, home repair pros, gearheads, adventurers, and everyone in between, close to 50 models in all. And we also build cars intended to be raced – on the track and in the street.

This week, we unveiled pricing for the 2025 Corvette ZR1, which is the fastest, quickest and most powerful ‘Vette ever built. Starting MSRP is $174,005 – this is no econobox – but you get a lot of car for your cash. It’s the personification of what the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs called “a screamer.”

The ZR1 comes with a 1,064 horsepower twin-tubo V8 engine. For an extra $8,495 you get a high-downforce rear wing, among other things. The result is a car that has a top track speed as tested of 233 miles per hour – which can go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.3 seconds. Chances are you will never need to drive 233 mph – and if you do, there will be lawmen on your tail. But the ZR1 sure is a hoot to drive.

Meanwhile, GM is pressing ahead with our new Cadillac Formula 1 team, which will start racing in 2026. That might not mean much to the average commuter, but it is worth noting that this is the first new team to join the F1 circuit since 2016 – there are only 11 teams in total, and just one other based in the U.S. And GM is going to do more than just race – we’re going to build engines for F1 cars. Last week, GM named racing vet Russ O’Blenes, now the director of the GM Motorsports propulsion and performance team, as CEO of the new GM Performance Power Units business, formed together with TWG Motorsports.

One final note on racing: This week we also gave people a first look at Cadillac’s new V-Series R Grand Touring Prototype race car, which will participate in this year’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. I don’t personally know much about IMSA racing, but I can tell you this: the cars drive really, really fast.

– Eric J. Savitz, editor-in-chief, GM News