Remembering My 1990 Corvette ZR-1
I have a passion for horror and that's what I'm usually writing about (www.scarybobproductions.webs.com), but this time I want to talk about cars. My need for cool wheels goes all the way back to my early teens when I got my first fleeting glimpse of the 1963 Corvette with its revolving headlights. The world faded to the background and it was just me and that car. I was thunderstruck. That was the beginning of my lust for fast sports cars.
Since then I've owned a few, but there was this one...
When my 1986 Corvette was destroyed in a freak accident I went looking for something special. What I found was the 1990 Corvette ZR-1, which was a joint venture between Chevrolet, Lotus and Mercury Marine. They made three thousand of them, which in car terms was very limited production. It had a 350 cubic inch V8 with tuned port injection just like every other C4 Corvette, but that was where the similarities ended. As the aforementioned collusion probably suggests, it was a marine engine, a monster with double overhead cams, four valves per cylinder, twice as many fuel injectors as it needed and therein lied the secret.
Set in the dash near the cluster of gages was a removable valet key controlling those extra fuel injectors. The key in the off position was removable and limited the engine output to 250 hp. The key in the on position lit up all sixteen fuel injectors and delivered a whopping 375 hp. I continue to believe the performance numbers were understated. That power, whatever it truly was went through a 6 speed transmission before being delivered to massive tires that launched the car to 60 mph in something less than 4 seconds (first gear).
I put that ZR-1 through its paces many times, but I never drove it faster than when I first slid down into the cockpit. I really liked the car, but I had to test drive it. Duh! The Chevrolet dealer was on a stretch of four-lane highway and it wasn't uncommon to see state cops out there, fortunately for me they were all at the donut shop (Oh, lighten up. It was a joke.). I started through the gears with my foot in each one of those fuel injectors. I had goosebumps. My hair was standing on end. I shifted from forth to fifth and dropped my eyes to the speedometer. Good God, I was going 150 mph. That's the fastest I ever had it, even though the advertised 205 mph top end mocked me. In truth I was just a little scared of it.
I was never the type to keep a car like that closed up in a garage. It was made for the open road and who was I to deny it such destiny. I could fill a book with the memories, but one stands out. My wife and I were on a road trip, traveling along a stretch of a two-lane highway and it was my routine to cruise around 80 mph. When I came to slower traffic I would simply wait for the opportunity before tapping into that incredible horsepower waiting to push me back in the seat.
I was behind a panel truck waiting patiently, unaware of the presence of a Trans Am in front of it. The Trans Am was a fast version of the Pontiac supercar and had probably eaten its share of C4 Corvettes, but that driver didn't have a clue about what was coming around on the left.
I was beside the truck when I saw the rear end of the Trans Am drop under the torque of a downshift. Yes, there was a God! I simply put my foot all the way into fourth gear. I shifted into fifth as I blew past him, which was about the time he gave up, so I'm not sure he had time to read my license plate.
The race was over and I returned to my preferred cruising speed. A few miles down the road I saw him in the rearview mirror coming fast. I had absolutely no plan to let that driver see what had just cleaned his Trans Am's clock. I dropped it into forth gear and put my foot back into it. That driver never saw more than a black dot fading in the distance.
I loved that Corvette. I drove it for ten years and put a lot of miles on it (much to the horror of Corvette enthusiasts across the country). The plan was to keep it until they pried my cold dead fingers from the gear shift.
Any car eventually needs restored and I was planning on taking the ZR-1 into retirement, so it seemed logical to get a jump on it. With 95,000 miles on the odometer an engine rebuild seemed like a good starting point. I talked to the mechanic who regularly serviced the car and had previous experience with the LT5 engine. He agreed to take on the job and we started looking for parts. That was when the picture got ugly. There were no parts.
Seriously? I knew the engine was rare, but we were talking about General Motors. No parts, but the search continued and the perseverance kinda paid off. We managed to locate two complete rebuild kits, but both were owned by the same individual. That didn't sound good and the truth was worse. The rebuild kits were $20,000 each and that didn't touch the labor involved in the job. That was when my love affair with that Corvette ended. Even then I didn't want to let it go, but I knew I had to.
In May of 2007, a month before we retired and moved to Florida, I found a silver 2005 Nissan 350Z with 3,000 miles on it. The first thing I wanted to know was why it had such low milage. The dealer explained that a woman bought it new, put 800 miles on it and decided she wanted a convertible. After that it essentially became a toy for the sales staff. Yes, I traded my beloved Corvette in on that 350Z, but a big piece of my heart went with it.