Twin-Turbo C4 Callaway Corvette: A Performance Monster No One Wanted
Thanks to its lofty price tag, the amazing twin-turbo C4 Callaway Corvette is a rare but cool find today.
It’s oftentimes easy to take for granted, but we truly live in a golden age of automotive performance. We can go out right now – if we have the means, of course – and buy the quickest and fastest production vehicles in history, fresh off the showroom floor. But of course, it wasn’t always like that, as the later 1970s and 1980s were truly a depressing time for automotive enthusiasts. Even iconic sports cars like the Corvette had little to offer, but there were a few aftermarket companies making those vehicles into the performance machines they deserved to be. Regardless, as amazing as the twin-turbo C4 Callaway Corvette truly was, virtually no one bought it, as YouTuber 337 Speed discusses in this video.
From 1987-1991, prospective buyers could waltz into their local Chevy dealership, choose RPO code B2K, and promptly take delivery of a twin-turbo C4 Callaway Corvette a short time later. GM would build the Corvette, then ship it off to Callaway, where the tuner would fit a pair of huffers to the car. The resulting performance was nothing less than stunning, even by today’s standards, as a one-off build propelled the C4 to a top speed of 255 miles-per-hour – all while remaining emissions compliant.
Callaway did far more than simply slap turbos on the C4’s L98 small block V8, of course, as it went through the engine and gave it forged internals, splayed four-bolt main caps, and a lower compression ratio of 7.5:1. The turbos were the main power adder, however, taking the factory output of 230 horsepower up to 345 at first, then 402 ponies and a whopping 582 pound-feet of torque later on. Callaway’s record-breaking Corvette made an astounding 898 horsepower and 772 pound-feet, however, some eye-opening numbers for this particular time period.
So why didn’t more people opt for this amazing package? Well, for starters, it cost around $20K – not including the price of the donor Corvette – and could run as high as $30k depending on options. Callaway also had trouble building the cars fast enough, and only produced around 125 or so of its 400 orders before the ZR1 came along and effectively rendered it meaningless. But today, the C4 Callaway Corvette remains one of the coolest creations we’ve ever seen, and a truly amazing machine given the time period it existed in.
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