The amazingly quick and magnificent 2009 Chevy Corvette — sometimes called the “C6″ in recognition of its six generations of life, so far — still sits atop the American 2-seater sports car landscape. Made of fiberglass — as it always has been — this highest of high-performing sports cars pays direct complement to a time when America was about automotive speed and power.

This newest sixth-generation ‘Vette continues to add to a stellar record of past performance, and Chevy has seen to it that the car’s fan base out there gets exactly what it wants. Delivering on that promise with various engine and suspension combinations, the car has demonstrated increasing sophistication over the years to go with its improvements in horsepower, speed and — surprisingly — fuel economy.

The C6 — as this generation of car is sometimes known — hit the market back in 2005, rolling off its Bowling Green, Kentucky line fully ready to rumble no matter the various engine size or suspension rig-out. It’s also a technological adept and joyous to drive.

The Corvette has always been used as a kind of expensive test bed for new innovations in engine, sound, body and other characteristics, and the things that the engineers have learned from the 2009 Corvette will make their way all the way down the Chevy lineup, eventually arriving at the subcompact, pedestrian driver level.

The Corvette has never been one to hide away its engine performance in plain vanilla wrapped-V8 engines. There’s a 7 liter powerplant that puts the pedal to the metal with 435 horsepower and that’s not even the most powerful of the bunch. Still, the ‘Vette can dance with the big boy supercar exotics anytime it chooses, and at a price far less than those other models.

The ultra high-performance ‘ZR1′ model is the fastest and most powerful Corvette ever produced. A supercharged 6. 2 liter, 6-speed engine and transmission combination together produce over 635 screaming horses, giving the ZR1 a top speed of over 205 miles per hour, and still at a price considerably less than other cars boasting similar performance.

Today’s 2009 Chevy Corvette comes in at the top of a very large hill in even its most standard versions, though one would be hard-pressed to term anything having to do with the ‘Vette as being “standard.” There’s a level of performance baked into the 2-seater that no American car has come close to touching, and its fiberglass-clad rig-out delivers awesome looks to go with its awesome performance. The ZR1, even at around a hundred grand, is sure to draw out even more lust in the car’s fans.