By Joshua Fechter Updated 11:48 am, Thursday, September 24, 2015

SAN ANTONIO — The New Braunfels Police Department is rolling out the sleekest member of its vehicle fleet: a seized 2007 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 named “Coptimus Prime” that previously belonged to a San Antonio-based drug trafficker with Mexican cartel ties.

Agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Comal County Metro Narcotics Task Force, which includes the police department, seized the Corvette during a 2011 raid on a methamphetamine trafficking cell linked to the Mexican drug cartel La Familia Michoacana.

The cell was responsible for moving 25 pounds of nearly 100-percent pure meth each month that sold for a maximum of $20,000 per pound, mySA.com archives show.

Law enforcement agents estimated that the cell brought in $4.5 million a month for the cartel.

At the time, agents seized 10 pounds of meth, high-caliber weapons, cars and assets valued at $500,000, including more than $140,000 [...]

Business Insider readers already know that we like the Chevy Corvette Stingray.

We named it our 2014 Car of the Year, concluding that although it might not be the mythical Corvette of the Mind — that honor goes to the second-generation version of the car from the early 1960s or the third-gen Vette, built from 1968 to 1982 — it was certainly the best Corvette to yet emerge from the storied bluegrass assembly line in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

But you should know something. There’s actually a better Vette.

A much better Vette.

There’s just one drawback. While the Stingray (technically the C7, or seventh generation of the all-American sports car) is a deeply compelling motoring experience, the better Vette is a way of life.

It’s the Z06, and it’s a living, breathing supercar.

The stats: 650 horsepower, 650 f00t-pounds of torque. You’ll know this because Chevy has included a small plaque with the data, located [...]

Imagine Target trumping Saks Fifth Avenue. Timex outshining Rolex. Chevy beating Lamborghini.

Actually, that last one should come as no surprise. The Chevrolet Corvette has added to its status as the world’s most affordable supercar as it emerged the king of the 2015 Car and Driver Lightning Lap competition at Virginia International Raceway. It outran such thoroughbreds as the $353,115 McLaren 650S Spider, $274,120 Lamborghini Huracan and $163,000 Porsche 911 GT3.

So quick was the $100,245 Z06 — Corvette’s 650-horsepower performance model — that in the nine-year history of the famed Lightning Lap only one car has ever recorded a faster time: the 2014 Porsche 918 hybrid, a carbon-fiber cyborg from the future that costs nearly nine times as much the Corvette. The $875,175 Porsche was faster by a mere 1.5 seconds. That’s over $250,000 per half second.

The Corvette’s performance left Car and Driver Editor-in-chief Eddie Alterman in awe.

“It’s incredible how much performance [...]

By Saturday morning (August 29th), the Carlisle Fairgrounds were packed from wall to wall for another year of Corvettes at Carlisle. It was literally overwhelming. Walk thirty paces and you find yourself a midst a sea of Corvettes, with no clue from whence you came. Letting this Corvette heaven wash over you, the beauty of similarity is apparent.

It is a celebration of the greatest American sports car, and everything right in the world. Raucous V-8 power. Finely tuned suspension. But alas, amidst all of familiarity there are certainly some standouts. While many are good at blending in, others can’t help but grab your attention. Here are some of the most outrageous things we [...]

General Motors Supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 | Cadillac CTS-V, Chevrolet Corvette Z06

It’s tough not to love any engine that produces 650 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque, especially when its brute force is delivered linearly, predictably, and with the classic Chevy small-block V-8 rumble. And we definitely love the Chevrolet Corvette Z06’s supercharged LT4 V-8, which GM says is among the very lightest and most compact engines capable of such prodigious output. Displacing the same 6.2 liters as the naturally aspirated fifth-generation small-block V-8 that powers regular Corvette Stingray models (more details on that engine here), the LT4 runs a maximum boost of 9.4 psi to produce as much as 200 more horsepower. (Fun fact: The LT4’s Eaton supercharger stuffs four lobes into a 1.74-liter blower.)

The engine’s overall dimensions are barely larger than those of the nonsupercharged Chevy V-8—the blower adds less than one [...]