By Rory Reid
Monday, 23rd July 2012
The Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport is good for many things; posing in, drifting, driving fast — oh and cooking. No, seriously. The car is powered by an enormous 6.2-litre V8 engine that chucks out 430bhp, 575Nm of torque and, crucially, enough heat to fricassee your eyeballs if you get too close.
We thought we’d test just how hot things could get by cooking a three course meal using nothing but the heat from the Vette’s V8 engine. Not wanting to die of food poisoning alone, we roped in our buddy Robert Llewellyn — he of Red Dwarf fame — and proceeded to attempt world’s first Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport car-b-que.
Our quintessentially English menu juxtaposed well with the quintessential American muscle car. For starters, we’d have asparagus wrapped in bacon. The main course was an ambitious sirloin steak with yorkshire puddings, gravy and mixed vegetables, and for desert we’d have apple pie and custard.
The method for preparing the dish was simplicity itself. We’d lump each of the ingredients into its own foil-based take-away container and seal it. Each container was then placed next to the exhaust manifold – the part of the engine most likely to melt your skin off if you touch it – and secured to something sturdy using cable ties.
We’d then fire up the V8, go for a spin round the block and pray with all our might that the exhaust didn’t set fire to the packages or explode raw meat over the engine. Once our cruising cooking was complete, we’d find ourselves a nice picnic spot, pull over and risk life and limb eating our car-b-que’d creation.
It has to be said the most worrying aspect of all of this wasn’t whether the food tasted any good. We were most concerned about whether we’d die of food poisoning or some sort of weird carbon monoxide-related disease of the gut.
Watch how we got on my hitting play in the embedded video above, leave your feedback for recipes and other cooking techniques, then go check our the other videos in our hoonerific Joyride series.
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