See It: Chevrolet Corvette ‘Flies’ 110 Feet

The Chevrolet Corvette can fly down the road, but what about in the air?

That’s what racer and stunt driver Travis Pastrana wanted to find out when he won a Corvette Z06 at the Freedom 500 race of Ford Crown Victorias at Cleetus McFarland’s Freedom Factory track in April.

Pastrana was convinced by his friends to sell the Corvette Z06 and buy a standard Corvette Stingray instead, as to not ruin the rarer and more valuable higher performance model.

His team then went to work modifying it for a jump, by spray painting it with an American flag design and doing nothing else, as the whole point of the misadventure was to see how a stock car would hold up.

HEAR IT! CHEVROLET CORVETTE X HITS THE TRACK

Pastrana holds the Guinness record for the longest ramp jump in a car at 269 feet, but that was in a rally car designed to take a hit. He let his fellow stunt driver Jim York do the honors this time around in a YouTube video posted to Channel 199.

Using a setup with two dirt ramps set 110 feet apart, York made his approach at 68 mph and just cleared the gap, landing nose-down hard enough to set off the airbag. But aside from damaging the radiator, the car survived intact and was still drivable.

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After analyzing the data from the Corvette’s Performance Data Recorder, Pastrana said it looked like the traction control kicked in on the first ramp, which lowered its takeoff speed just enough to affect the vehicle’s attitude and the length of the jump. He thinks that if they’d accounted for that, it may have landed perfectly with no issues. Nevertheless, Pastrana seemed pleased with the outcome, which proved the point he was trying to make that any car can fly.