The Rarest ZR-1 of All?

[vandornjim]

Came across something today which brought back a few memories…

It was early ’95 when I got the call from Chevrolet World Headquarters that my request for a meeting had been granted. A couple of weeks later I found myself at Detroit Metro airport with a brand new ’94 Admiral Blue 6 speed coupe waiting for me. The guy at the lot said “Man, you must BE somebody!” Yeah, I was just a guy from the desert who thought he could do something that Chevy never did. Celebrate something from the past….

Amidst the planning of the final ZR-1, “The Legend Lives” event began to take on a lot of attention from GM. They even made chocolate bars in the shape of the ZR-1 emblem. When they asked if they could provide anything else, my mind raced. Hey, when does Chevy make an offer like that!? What do they have that we could use? I kept the offer in the back of my mind….

We thought of the photo op but we had too many cars to do it right. There were some 400 cars there and so the idea came to me to do a photo with all those attending, standing behind a lineup of every single color ZR-1 ever produced. And so it was….almost.

Yes, just when we had it all planned and laid out, I remembered there was a color we never saw produced on a ZR-1. There were problems matching the color to the fascia as I remember, so Copper Metallic was only available on the non-ZR-1 models. In 1994, only 116 total cars were painted code 66. But there WAS a ZR-1 painted Copper Metallic because I had once driven the car at Bowling Green on a “test drive”.

So I remembered the offer from Chevy and made the call. “You guys have a Copper ZR-1 somewhere and we want it!” I said. Soon the calls came in from all over about various cars and colors but no Copper Metallic was to be found. John Heinricy finally called and said he thought he remembered the car going to the crusher some months back. So much for the only Copper Metallic ZR-1 in existence.

After the event I received a package with a return address of Bowling Green, KY. I carefully opened it to find something tightly wrapped in foam. Ever so carefully I cut and peeled to reveal a treasure. There in my hands were two brand new emblems. One was the large “CORVETTE” and the other the small “ZR-1” which went on the rear fascia of a ZR-1…a Copper Metallic ZR-1!!

Inside was an anonymous note which read simply:
“Best we could do. The only ones.”