Promises made by advertising are all well and good. But should you really believe the hype? Back in 2001, Autocar’s senior road tester Ben Whitworth didn’t think so. Which is why he took Chevrolet’s Corvette C5 to task in Germany – the nearest place with a public highway that would let him hit the kind of speed he was after.

Whitworth reported how a General Motor’s advert presented “a shot of a ’Vette convertible that says ‘American Beauty £37,999’.” But what really caught his eye, among various other statistics, was this: “Awesome maximum of 176mph, where permitted”.

Soon enough, he was picking up photographer at the crack of a Saturday dawn and barrelling towards the Channel Tunnel in that very same Corvette. He was evidently taken: “As we leave Calais and head for Belgium, I give the 339bhp, 5.7-litre V8 a prod. Bit like poking a hornets’ nest, really. The car flies, squatting back on its rear tyres and catapulting down the road with venom.

“The chugga-chugga low-rev soundtrack is replaced by a serrated crackle from the small-block eight that makes you dive for the redline at every opportunity. Dig into three-figure speeds and the ’Vette rockets along.”

He was less taken with other aspects of the US muscle car. Whitworth reported switching on the cruise control and surveying the cabin. “Not good. If God is in the details, then the Corvette is Satan in a shiny red suit.”

He wasn’t enamoured of the ride quality, either, particularly on some rough surfaces through Belgium. “The suspension on the big American seems incapable of sponging away intrusions,” he complained.

Arrival in Germany meant, initially, a few hours taking photos and looking for a straight section of autobahn for the next day’s challenge. Somewhere between kilometre markers 252 and 253 on the A48 just outside Trier, they found it.

The day came and Whitworth was soon pushing the Corvette up to 5000rpm in top gear. He wrote: “As I gun the Corvette in the cool early morning air, Wren starts snapping at the steadily ascending speedometer needle.”

It reaches an indicated 170mph. Wren is poised with his stopwatch. “The engine, barking like a rabid Cerberus, almost drowns out the tyre roar from the Goodyear Eagle F1s, but it’s the wind shrieking around the fabric roof that has us wincing.”

Whitworth sees 190mph on the digital head-up display. “I yell at Wren to start the clock. My senses are overloaded. The mechanical cacophony, the heat seeping into the footwell, the odour of hot metal, the coppery taste of fear in my mouth – all vie for my attention as I concentrate on keeping the bucking and bellowing Corvette in a straight line.”

Moments later, the photographer puts the time taken into Whitworth’s notebook – “12.4sec”.

Whitworth backs off the power, slows the “pinking Corvette” to an “easy 100” and Wren does the maths: “180mph, bang on. Faster than advertised.”