1990 Chevrolet Corvette ZR-1

This car, Lot 2162, sold for $28,600, including buyer’s premium, at Auctions America’s Auburn Spring auction in Auburn, IN, on May 12, 2017.

In the mid-1980s, big changes were taking place in the automotive space. Carburetors were going away and horsepower was back in style. Nissan and Toyota started building overhead-cam, aluminum-block V8s. IMSA and SCCA road racing thrived. And as F1 cars raced through downtown Detroit, high-tech, Euro-spec, gray-market cars were all the rage. No wonder Corvette engineers felt compelled to do something radical to keep the fourth-generation Corvette up front — especially ahead of Porsche.

That “something radical” was the wide-hipped, LT5-powered ZR-1. Its Lotus-designed 4-camshaft, 32-valve V8 engine, built by Mercury Marine in Stillwater, OK, was the most radical departure for a production Corvette ever. Rated at 375 hp in its debut year of 1990, the LT5 pumped out an exciting 50% more power than the period pushrod L98, revved way higher, and basically punched the Europeans and Japanese right between the eyes. If the Porsche 928 and 911 were trained assassins in pinstriped suits, the ZR-1 was a flinty-eyed Clint Eastwood growling, “Do you feel lucky, punk?”

Massive corporate excitement

As an account executive on Chevrolet racing and high-performance advertising at the time, I can report that the interest in the ZR-1 within the division was tremendous — rather like it must have been at SpaceX more recently when the first reusable Falcon 9 rocket launched. In its time, the exotic ZR-1 likewise seemed to be carrying Chevrolet and the Corvette nameplate vigorously into the future.

Unfortunately, though, reality had other plans. One problem was the high price of the ZR-1 option. At $27,016, the ZR-1 option represented an 85% bump in MSRP over the standard L98 coupe. Another problem was that it wasn’t available in a drop-top, although engineers at the GM Tech Center did install a 4-cam LT5 engine in at least one convertible. And a third problem — perhaps the largest one — was that buyers at the time just didn’t warm to such an “exotic” Corvette.

This last point invites some comparative study. In the early 2000s, conservative old Harley-Davidson tried to advance its technological image by commissioning a Porsche-designed, liquid-cooled, overhead-camshaft, high-performance engine to attract customers who wanted a dose of “high tech” in their Milwaukee V-twin. The result was the V-Rod, which has soldiered on for 17 years but has never, even remotely, threatened to become the “new” Harley.

In the mid-1980s, Coca-Cola killed its core product, replacing it with “New Coke.” That fizzled fast. And Porsche’s front-engine, liquid-cooled 1978 928 was also strongly derided by the rear-engine, air-cooled Boxer faithful. (Although in this last case, Porsche ultimately broke through spectacularly, with three of its five nameplates now carrying their motors up front.)

The lesson here is simple: Be careful when modifying the essential DNA of a successful product.

High luster, deep loss

Fast-forward to spring 2017 and this bright red ZR-1 at Auctions America Auburn. The first thing that stands out about this sale is the low price of $28,600 for an as-new car with less than 1,000 miles on the clock. Or put more starkly, 27 years after this General Motors engineering flagship was built, today it’s worth less than half of its original $58,995 MSRP, and about the same as some fairly common American classics such as a 1967 Ford Mustang convertible, 1969 AMC AMX or 1972 Chevrolet Nova SS. Rather than gain in value, it lost big time.

It is worth noting here that the first-year 1990 ZR-1 was rated at 375 hp, a figure that stood until 1993, when the output was bumped to 405 hp and remained there through 1995. Even with the higher output, though, production dropped to just 448 units in ’95, indicating that buyers just weren’t into it. In contrast, when the new 330-hp pushrod LT4 engine debuted for 1996 (at a far more palatable $1,450), buyers snapped up 6,359 of them — nearly matching the ZR-1’s entire 1990–95 production in a single model year. This shows that people certainly did want Corvette performance — but at a manageable price.

My personal view is that while the fourth-generation ZR-1s do deserve to get on the cam in terms of value, there are impediments to this happening quickly. The first is inertia, as no C4-generation cars are particularly valuable to date, excepting the final-year 1996 Grand Sport. Not even the factory-built Corvette Challenge racers of 1988–89 pull much money. Secondly, the 32-valve LT5 engine never enjoyed a widespread racing career (excepting a big handful of World Challenge cars). And lastly, the ZR-1 ultimately failed to forge a lasting new technological course (i.e., overhead cams) for Corvette.

Then there is the fact that the ZR-1’s performance advantages were temporary. In 1998, shortly after starting as Editor of GM’s Corvette Quarterly, I met IndyCar racer Johnny Unser at the Nevada track now known as Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch to test a ZR-1 against a new C5 Z51. We found that the Z51 just about equaled the ZR-1 in every way — for less money. And so, unlike the L88 big-block or LT-1 small-block Chevy engines accomplished in their day, in the harsh light of history, the LT5 ZR-1 engine can’t even claim a particular performance increase over more commonly available powertrains.

It’s time to buy

All of this said, I think the relatively low prices for ZR-1s do represent a great buying opportunity for a truly interesting and ambitious product. At a modest investment, you can buy what was a technologically sophisticated and expensive sports car for its day, which had been specifically charged with countering the surging technology from Europe and Asia (and the Dodge Viper) in an effort to strengthen Corvette’s claim as America’s sports car.

Thus, I can imagine a time when, as with the DeLorean DMC-12, Ferrari 308 and 328, and Porsche 356 and 911, the ZR-1 will get recognized as the next great new old thing. When that happens, we will all call this beautifully preserved ZR-1 very well bought indeed.

(Introductory description courtesy of Auctions America.)