Why a ZR-1?

[tccrab]

Girlfriend is my first 'Vette.

Never really wanted one pre-Girlfriend.
The Corvette tax always scared me off.

Girlfriend came to me, not I to her.
I wasn't looking.
She was a "Good Job, Here's A Pat On The Back" from a very well to do childhood friend/business associate.
It was "A Deal I Couldn't Refuse", and I mean that in every sense of the term.


TomC
"Crabs"

[DaveK]

"Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know." - Louis Daniel Armstrong

[Z51JEFF]

How could you want anything else?[IMG][/IMG]

[rhipsher]

This is good stuff. So far what I've gathered is that most of us are upper middle class. Ferrari's and Lambo's are just a little out of our price range. "We all can't be Dr. Sanjay." And although we all love corvettes and they were more in our price range we didn't want a plane Jane dime a dozen vette you see every day. And we love the ZR-1's rich short history in time and the impact it had on the world when it came out. And although it's not the fastest vette anymore the fact remains that it took an awful long time for GM to out do it. And you know it was not easy for them to do.

[Z51JEFF]

Originally Posted by rhipsher

Ferrari's and Lambo's are just a little out of our price range. "We all can't be Dr. Sanjay."

Yes,but Dr.Sanjay could have pretty much whatever he wants and he owns a ZR-1,says alot.

[DaveK]

To be perfectly honest, if I had all the money in the world I'd still take a ZR-1 over anything else.. Ferrari, Lambo-whatever. I fell in love in 1989 and am still in love. I thought that the C4 body was almost perfect and with the slight changes with the ZR-1 package it WAS perfect. I've never seen another car that just looks 'right' from any angle the way the ZR-1 does. The fact that it also blended performance, economy and handling into the same package just was the icing on the cake.

Diligentia, Vis, Celeratis - as we used to say.

[SharkPilot]

It all started for me when I was 19 and brought my first Corvette home. That was my white '69 and I still own it. A few years later a friend purchased a '68 435hp roadster. She moved away and shortly after that I bought that car from her.
Around that time the ZR-1's were still being built and I loved everything about them except for the price. To me it was always something special to see a ZR-1 on the road but I never thought that I would own one.
Years later, the ache for a ZR-1 still burned when I realized that my income and the car's prices had come a lot closer together. So I went shopping. A friend, the same one that had owned the '68, wondered why I didn't go for a C5 Z06. When she asked that we were at a Corvette show. There was a row of probably 15 Z06's lined up and down at the other end was a lone 90 model ZR-1. That was the answer to her question. I have always loved the LT5 engine and I also like having something different than everyone else.
A few months later I brought "Mr. Z" home. Yes, there have been a few speedbumps along the way but in the 2+ years that I have owned it that grin is still there every time that engine revs up.
Are there faster Corvettes? Yes. Are there Corvettes that cost less to fix? Yes Are newer model Vettes more comfortable? Maybe.
But none of them have that engine. And that's what a ZR-1 is all about.

SharkPilot

[flyin ryan]

This is turning out to be pretty good thread...

[TexasRedZ]

It's all about that beautifully crafted engine!
I'm from a little younger generation but my story is the same and incorporates alot of what has already been said.
I was a teenager when the ZR-1 really came into it's own and I remember reading every article I could find about it. It wasn't untill 1997 that I actually saw one in person. It was sitting in the parking lot of the retail store I worked at in high school. I knew something was different about it but it wasn't untill I got closer and saw the emblem on the rear bumper that I realized how special it truely was.
Fast forward to college, my sophmore year for my final in speach class I gave a lecture over the "KOTH" and the famous article 0-100-0 featuring none other than Lingenfelter's mighty ZR-1. I got an A+ with a female professor none the less.
Time passed and by 2006 I had almost forgotten about the mighty car until one day I saw a '90 red on red at a local car lot. It was only the second time I had seen one on the street. Sure I had seen a couple at a car show here and there but not a driver. So of course I checked it out, kicked the tires and B.S.'d with the salesman but talk is cheap when you ain't got money. So I moved on and some other lucky guy bought it.
Not 8 months later I saw that same car back at the car lot and thought "what? this can't be", but it was.
I knew then it was now or never. Without hesitation I took it home that afternoon. 18 months later it has been the biggest PITA but I wouldn't trade it for the world. The permagrin that you get as soon as you turn the key, the punch in the gut you get stomping on it in 2nd at 20 mph and leaving tread as far as your rear view can see, oh and seeing every mustang guy's face through the rear view too.

[Jason 91]

This is an interesting topic with lots of great history.

For me and like others have said, this was the coolest car out there when I was a 16 year old kid. I wanted one so bad that I used to get on the nerves of people always talking about it. I remember it being a major event just to see one on the street (still is to this day). At the time, I thought I could never afford one.

A few years ago after having moved to Denver , I was talking to a peer of mine who was a muscle car fan and telling him how I'd always wanted to own a ZR-1. He said to me "What's your price range?" and I told him what it was thinking I didn't have enough disposable cash to purchase one (I had seen a 92 for sale in the NYC area about a year before for 40k, as I recall, so this was my reference point). He promptly pulled up a couple on one of the car listing sites for well within my price range to my amazement.

The rest was history once I found "that blue color" I always liked.

Jason