Dubbed the King of the Hill for a reason, this 1990 Corvette is something to marvel at. This ZR-1 is being sold on Bring a Trailer and is one badass looking Corvette. With only 2,700 miles the car has barely been broken in. With a relatively untouched 5.7 L LT5 V8 built by Chevrolet, Lotus, and Mercury Marine the ZR-1 can hit a top speed of 175 mph, a tall task in that era. Said engine yanks out numbers good for 375 hp and 370 lb-ft.
Options include the iconic sawblade style wheels, deep black paint, and Nitto NT555 tires wrapped on top of the wheels. This ‘Vette comes equipped with selective ride modes built in conjunction with Lotus and sits pretty above Bilstein shock absorbers. All ZR-1s came with a 6-speed manual transmission, which was a great upgrade above the problematic Doug Nash 4+3 trannys and the regular 4-speeds at the time.
Also interesting was the gauge cluster included, specifically the uniqueness of it. The leather-wrapped steering wheel frames a central digital speedometer and fuel readout flanked by an analog tachometer and gauges for oil pressure, oil temperature, coolant temperature, and voltage. The odometer apparently has only 10 miles under the current owner, a peculiar tidbit.
This Corvette seems to have been all over the country, being located in Minnesota, Louisiana, and Texas. The King of the Hill would be named for its ability to keep up with any supercar at the time. In fact, Car and Driver put it up against a Porsche 911 Turbo at the time, more than double the price of the ZR-1 and yet it still held its ground. The ZR-1 was one of the most impressive vehicles at the time of its debut, with the ZR-1 setting multiple speed and acceleration records back then.
The bidding at the time of writing is currently at $35,000 with two days left and we think it’s this week’s auction buy. The value of these is surely to go up, with classic V8s being phased out quicker than this thing can get up to 60 mph. Also, one of the best performance car bargains out there aside from the cheaper later generation C5, which we owned, is the C4 ZR-1.
