2006 Ford GT vs. Dodge Viper SRT10 vs. Chevrolet Corvette z06

America is going through a tough patch. Our forces are taking relentless flak in Iraq, and the best place in the country for jazz music has been flattened by a bitch of a storm. Our beloved auto industry also is in big trouble. Too few Big-Three models have the sizzle to sell well without epic discounts, and high gas prices paint a bleak future for the jumbo guzzler pickups and SUVs about to make their debuts. As a result, GM and Ford now enjoy junk-bond investment status, while DaimlerChrysler clings to the next rung up the debt-rating ladder. Layoffs have been announced, bankruptcies rumored. Isn't there any good news out there?

Why, yes! Look up at yon hilltop, where the morning's first rays of sunshine are backlighting three American supercars, poised to perform heroic acts of derring-do, providing just the sort of ego-boosting, pride-swelling distraction our weary nation could use right about now.

The Chevy Corvette Z06 manages to generate 505 ultraconservative horsepower (see "Dyno Might" sidebar) from a pushrod two-valve small-block V-8 with no high-falutin' blowers and no fancy variable-valve gimcrackery. It weighs 100 pounds less than its next-best-performing Z51 sibling, thanks to extensive use of exotic materials (the structure underlying the carbon fiber and fiberglass skin is all aluminum and magnesium). No foreigner can touch this Vette's 6.3-pound/horsepower rating for under $100 grand. The Z06's price premium over the Z51 is under $20,000--half the surcharge commanded by Chevy's first exotic, the Corvette ZR-1 (in today's dollars). And the Z06 earns bonus points for delivering exoticar performance in a Clark Kent wrapper with the visibility and useful trunk space of a daily-driver--and without incurring a gas-guzzler tax.

Dodge transformed a torquaholic V-10 truck engine into a light, 510-horse aluminum race-car mill that's earned the Viper a long resume of motorsport credits and successfully challenged the Corvette's decades-old status as "America's Sports Car." Its 535-pound-foot torque rating easily out-twists any foreign production car with a five-digit price tag. Its cartoonish schoolboy study-hall styling still looks as powerful, confident, and outrageous as anything ever built in Sant'Agata, Italy. And the fact that this outrageous shape doesn't take to the skies like Superman at 180-plus mph is truly a miracle of aerodynamic engineering.