Chevrolet supercharges the Corvette

Even an old dog like the Corvette ZR1's LS9 Small Block Chevy can learn new tricks thanks to a supercharger and key supporting parts.

One might expect that there would be little interesting new technical content in the latest iteration of the venerable Small Block Chevrolet V8, especially when the company boasts that even this supercharged 600-hp (447-kW) LS9 variant shares 76% of its parts with existing members of its family, a clan with a lineage tracing back to the original 1955 Small Block.

But in fact, that thorough amount of development and improvement over the years, coupled with the high amount of cost-cutting shared content, means that very clever innovation had to be applied to the remaining parts to hit the company's targets for power and refinement.